By Just One Vote
by Momatu
Summary: A prequel to my Stepping from Shadows world, this is the story of Gray's first experience living amongst humans as a nearly two-year-old vampire. Set in the summer of 1920, while still finding her way in her new world, she and Carlisle travel to Tennessee to witness the decisive battle in the seventy-year long fight for full suffrage for American women.
1. Chapter 1

July 17, 2019

As I began writing this, I expected it to be a one shot a few thousand words long. It ended up six chapters and around 35,000 words. As I researched, I was amazed to see how drawn in I became, how anxious I was to see how it all turned out—given that, of course, I already knew how it turned out. I've enjoyed writing this more than anything else I've done, and I hope you'll enjoy reading it.

WARNING: 'Reader discretion is advised.' This fic is based in 1920 and includes racial themes prevalent at the time. They are not the focus of the fic, but they are not glossed over either. The story of Gray and Carlisle is fictional, but the events happening around them are real and told as faithfully as I could, not being a history professor. Women's suffrage grew out of the abolitionist movement. This fic contains arguments and quotes from both sides, for and against, and many of the arguments against were on racist grounds. I want to make clear that by including them in the fic, I am not condoning or promoting them in any way, shape, or form. I find them repugnant. I debated skimming over them, but I decided that to do so would be disrespectful to the memory of the people who suffered as a result of them—and continue to suffer as a result of them—and would be giving those who promoted them a free pass. We cannot ignore our history when we find it shameful. That being said, there are words that I will not use under any circumstances.

Also, considering the subject matter, this fic naturally involves politics. It is not, however, intended as a political statement. I look at it as a study of human nature. To that end, I've deliberately avoided referring to either political party by name.

I researched this fic both online and with Elaine Weiss' _The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight To Win The Vote._ Suffragists (Suffs) and Anti-Suffragists (Antis) and other historical figures named were real people, and for better or worse, sentiments and direct quotes attributed to them are accurate according to what I was able to find. The sources of the sentiments and quotes are documented in _The Woman's Hour_. Some may be shocking, but for some the only word for them is disgusting.

I've striven to be historically accurate, but I don't intend this fic to be a documentary. While arguments of both sides are included, the story is not impartial. The story is told through Gray's eyes and is influenced by her feelings and beliefs—those of a 17-year-old, privileged member of the social elite, Yankee suffragette, whose human life was cut short just as it was beginning and who is still mourning the loss of that life, her family, and friends, while also trying to adjust to her new life as a vampire without going crazy from all the voices in her head.

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement is intended. All publicly recognizable fictional characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. All historical figures are represented as accurately as possible.

Thank you to Raum and to o2shea for all their help!

XIX

* * *

There are a lot of characters in this story, all of whom were real people. As they come in, they're introduced with any relevant info, but below is a run down.

For the Suffs:

National American Woman Suffrage Association

Carrie Chapman Catt, president of NAWSA, hand-picked successor to Susan B. Anthony

Catherine Kenney

Marjorie Shuler

Abby Milton

Harriet Upton, president of the Ohio Woman's Suffrage Association and one of the first two women named as a vice chairman in a major national party

Anne Dudley

Charl Ormond Williams, school superintendent in Shelby County and one of the first two women named as a vice chairman in a major national party

National Women's Party

Sue Shelton White, native Tennessean and chairman of the National Women's Party.

Alice Paul, leader of the National Women's Party

Anita Pollitzer

Betty Gram

For the Antis:

Josephine Pearson, president of the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and the Southern Woman's League for the Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment

Laura Clay and Kate Gordon, both were former members of NAWSA who defected to oppose ratification because it would give black women the vote as well as white women.

Charlotte Rowe, leading Anti strategist from New York

Politicians and Prominent Tennesseans:

Governor Albert Roberts, Governor or Tennessee

James Cox, presidential candidate

Warren Harding, presidential candidate

Seth Walker, Tennessee House Speaker

Andrew Todd, Tennessee Senate Speaker

Senator Herschel Candler

Representative Harry Burn

Representative Thomas Riddick

Representative Joe Hanover

Representative Banks Turner

Newell Sanders, former U.S. senator

Will Taylor, Tennessee's junior U. S. Congressman

Kenneth McKellar, Tennessee's junior U.S. senator

Albert Williams, superintendent of public instruction and appointed by Governor Roberts to the administration's oversee ratification efforts

Edward Stahlman, editor of the _Nashville Banner_

* * *

XIX

"_It's too easy to imagine that the enfranchisement of American women simply arrived, like some evolutionary imperative, a natural step in the gradual march of progress. Or as a gift eventually bestowed by wise men on their grateful wives, daughters, and sisters. The women asked politely, staged a few picturesque marches, hoisted a few picket signs, and without much drama, 'Votes for Women' was achieved._

_That's not how it happened."_

_The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote_

Elaine F. Weiss

XIX

* * *

_Hermitage Hotel, Nashville Tennessee_

_July 17, 1920_

_So many humans_. . . .

Life as a young vampire was not easy. Standing in the living room of their suite, humans surrounded her. Venom pooled in Gray's mouth, and she swallowed hard. Standing beside a window covered with a thick curtain, she couldn't see them, but she could hear them. It seemed that half of the population of the United States had already descended on Nashville. The sound of their hearts beat in her ears like bass drums. This time last year, she would never have been able to control herself within a hundred yards of a human. Now, here she was, surrounded by them and in control. She was making progress, but it was still so difficult. Carlisle sat at the desk across the room and smiled at her encouragingly. He made it look so easy, being surrounded by them. He'd had centuries of practice, of course, but if she were perfectly honest, there were times she resented how at ease he was with them. She envied it.

_You'll get there, _he told her, as if he were the mind reader.

She returned his smile. He never doubted her, never wavered, and it gave her confidence. Twenty-one months ago, he'd done the only thing he could to save her from the influenza, and in the time since then, he'd devoted himself to her care and guidance. He'd created a cover story and new identities for them, the first of many they would assume in the future. To the world, they were brother and sister; their parents having died in the pandemic two years ago, he was now her guardian. No real brother could've devoted himself to his sister more fully. Carlisle possessed a genuinely compassionate soul. His thoughts truly mirrored his words and actions. She wouldn't disappoint him for the world.

_Page 451_.

Dutifully, Gray recited page 451 of _Anatomy of the Human Body_ in Italian. It was an exercise he'd developed to help her strengthen her ability to focus her mind. Normally, it helped, at least to a degree, but her mind could focus on multiple lines of thought simultaneously. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on one thing, other threads kept running in the background. And that was only her own thoughts. There were as many human minds surrounding her as there were hearts, and every one of them was filled with thoughts they projected at her. She'd thought she'd gone mad, awakening to this new life and hearing things that no one had said.

Today, though, her best efforts were in vain. Multiple lines of thought ran through her head, but all revolved around the fact that in a few short weeks, all of the decades of sacrifice, all of the uncompromising and dogged devotion of three generations of suffragists would either come to fruition, or it wouldn't. Every American woman would either gain the right to vote, or they wouldn't.

Gray thought of Trudy and Sibby, her two closest friends. The three of them had always been inseparable, but now, to them, she was dead and buried. What must this time be like for them? What had Mississippi and Delaware been like for them? The disappointment must've been palpable. Her time was over, but for better or for worse, theirs was only just dawning. Their very validity as American citizens was being decided by men they would never meet.

Carlisle came to her and placed his hand on her shoulder. She gripped it tightly.

"It has to pass, Carlisle. It has to."

"It will."

"You don't know that."

"I don't know that it will pass here and now, no. But if not now, someday."

Not if Warren Harding won the White House in November, Gray feared. He said he was in favor of women's suffrage, but she didn't trust him. Not with his promises to return to normalcy, which she knew meant a return to men, and only men, in charge while women were returned to their rightful sphere—subservient, second-class citizens. No rights, no voice.

Not that James Cox was any better. She didn't trust his proclamations of support any more than she did Harding's.

_Today is not the only day that will ever dawn, _Carlisle assured her.

In just the first month after Congress had passed the amendment, they had racked up eleven of the thirty-six states they needed for ratification. Gray had been too young to be among humans still and so hadn't learned it until after the fact, but Illinois had been one of the very first. She'd been elated and proud, and she had been so sure . . . It had seemed inevitable.

Now though, they were stuck at thirty-five. Eight states had rejected the amendment, and three had refused to take the question up—this year, at least, and Gray was sure it was now or never. Only North Carolina and Tennessee remained in play. At least in theory. North Carolina was a sure No. Only Tennessee stood between them and defeat.

Mississippi four months earlier had been crushing. The amendment had been soundly rejected in February, but at that time, only twenty-seven states had voted for the amendment. By the end of March, that number had grown to thirty-five. Only one more state was needed, and politicians from both parties feared that if it were to be passed somewhere else, the women they had voted against would in turn vote against them, and they persuaded the state Senate to recall the bill to reject. It had taken the lieutenant governor casting the tie-breaking vote, but the amendment had passed in the Mississippi Senate. Self-interest had prevailed where justice had not, and hope had soared. It was not to last. The legislators in the House had not been moved by party leaders, and they had voted it down for the second time. Gray had been devastated.

After that, only two states had been left as potential yes votes, Delaware and Tennessee. If Mississippi had been crushing, Delaware had been infuriating. It should've been a safe Yes. At the very least, Mississippi had taken a stand, and every legislator's vote was on record for history to judge, but the Delaware House had voted to adjourn without even taking it up, defeating the bill by default. Gray gritted her teeth. They'd had pledges of support from a safe majority of legislators . . . It was the work of the Antis, she was convinced of that. If only Mrs. Catt had not gone to Geneva! Had she only stayed in Dover, Gray was sure things would've been different. Full, nation-wide women's suffrage would've been settled law by now. She had no doubt the Antis had worked on the legislators—bribed them, threatened them, whatever dirty trick they'd needed, she had no doubt they'd have used. It had nearly driven her mad that men, whose inalienable right to vote had never been and would never be questioned, could deny that right to women without even being forced to exercise it themselves.

Now, it all came down to Tennessee. If they failed here, they failed. And nearly every one of the old Confederate states that had voted on the amendment had rejected it. Also, Gray was sure the Antis would be up to all the same tricks they had in Delaware, spreading their vicious lies and half-truths, threatening and bribing where their falsehoods failed to sway. For women who claimed to be defending feminine purity and the grace of womanhood, they could lie like cheap rugs easily enough when it suited them. To lose by one state . . . To come so close and fall short, it would be more than she could bear.

If only the governor of either Connecticut or Vermont could be worked on and made to call a special session. Either legislature would likely vote to ratify. But the governors refused. Corporate interests did not want suffrage, and they held too much influence.

Still, Tennessee had passed a limited suffrage bill last year, so all might not be lost. There remained a sliver of hope.

The light outside the window dimmed, and Gray peeked outside. The sun was her jailer now. If it shone, she was trapped inside and out of sight. It had dipped behind a cloud, but the cover was too sparse. They could not go out.

Letting the curtain fall shut, she covered her eyes and held her breath. This new hearing of hers extended for three miles, from what Carlisle and she had been able to determine. They didn't know whether the number of humans impacted that. In a city like Nashville, there were thousands of humans packed into three miles, and every one of their mental voices swarmed inside her head like angry bees. They overlapped each other and blended together indistinguishably. She could catch words or phrases in one voice before it mixed back in with all the others, but full sentences were incredibly difficult to follow. Identifying one voice from all the others seemed impossible. Except for Carlisle. His thoughts she could hear as clearly as if he spoke out loud no matter where they were or how many humans were nearby, whether she tried to or not. With Carlisle, the effort was to _not_ hear. She worked to give him as much privacy as she could. He didn't mind. To him, it was simply a matter of fact. She was the one who minded. She felt like a peeping Tom, especially when he thought of _her_, the young woman with the broken leg. Gray didn't know who she was, a name never accompanied the memories that so often filled Carlisle's mind, and she would never ask.

She had no more interest in listening to the thoughts of the humans around her than she did Carlisle's, but she had a gift, and she understood the value of that gift to their safety. They had to be careful, Carlisle and she, choosing to live amongst humans as they did. Secrecy was paramount, and her gift could save their lives, if she could learn to control it. As a vampire, her senses were heightened exponentially. Even after all this time, it could still be incredibly disorienting. She could be distracted by dust particles floating through a ray of light or the sound of a mouse crawling through the walls of a building across the street. Gray closed her eyes and held her breath. She hoped that by limiting what senses she could, she would have more luck in mastering this new one. She'd been around humans before, but this would be the longest period of time amongst the same group of humans. She hoped familiarity might help.

The newspapers had all reported that Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association—hand-picked successor to Susan B. Anthony—was coming to Nashville. If there was anyone who could take on those Antis and move Tennessee into the Yes column, Gray believed it was Mrs. Catt. She would arrive in just a few hours and had a suite reserved in the same hotel as Carlisle and she. Now, Gray concentrated on her name and tried to listen for it.

It took time and effort to straighten out the tangle inside her head, but as the sky grew dimmer and the time of Mrs. Catt's train's arrival approached, Gray heard what she'd been listening for. Two voices, both female. Suffs, definitely. NAWSA Suffs, not Women's Party. Awaiting Mrs. Catt's train. One local, one not, she felt by the tenor of their thoughts. Even a person's thoughts had a regional accent. That was all Gray could catch before the two women's mental voices slipped back into the torrent with the rest of them.

She hadn't heard very much, but what she did catch matched what she'd heard in conversations around them. The different groups of Suffs were at each other's throats. Not just the long standing, deep animosity between the Alice Paul's Women's Party and Mrs. Catt's NAWSA, the Tennessee Suffs themselves were divided by petty regional rivalries and grudges. And politics. The governor was up for re-election and was facing a primary challenger. Suffs who opposed the governor refused to work with those who supported him. They were fools. Secure the vote first, then argue over whom one supported. Without the former, the later was irrelevant. A favorite argument of men opposed to women's suffrage was that women were too emotional to be entrusted with the vote. If the Suffs couldn't get over themselves and remember they were on the same side, they would prove the argument for those making it.

Two other women were arriving in Nashville that evening. Sue White from the Women's Party, and Josephine Pearson, president of the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and head of the state division of the Southern Women's League for the Rejection of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment.

Sue White was a hero in Gray's eyes. She'd been jailed for the Cause and hunger struck while imprisoned. Gray felt awed at her bravery, and that of the other women like her. She herself had protested and picketed—even been brought home by the police once—but she'd never have been brave enough to face arrest and imprisonment. Josephine Pearson was worse than just the enemy, she was a hypocrite. She was a highly educated woman—she had a master's degree—opposed to women's suffrage. It was a contradictory combination that was incomprehensible to Gray.

Both sides—for ratification and against—had chosen the Hermitage Hotel as their base camp, and Gray would have a front row seat to witness it.

XIX

Impatient as she awaited the arrival of the soldiers in this upcoming battle, Gray slipped down to the lobby, a perfect yellow rosebud pinned to her all white dress.

Mrs. Catt, a 61-year-old veteran in the battle for suffrage, arrived at the Hermitage looking tired, Gray observed. But having recently returned from presiding over the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Switzerland, that was hardly surprising. And to add to that, for the past year she'd been traveling back and fourth across the country working to secure ratification of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment. Gray gazed at her from across the expansive lobby in deep admiration. She was relentless for the Cause, whereas Gray was useless. How she wished she could do her part too.

Feeling melancholy, as if a shadow passed not just over her but through her, she touched the brooch she wore—her mother's favorite. There was nothing in the world she wouldn't give for her mother and father to be standing beside her again. To see them again, even just for a day . . . Even for just an hour . . . The ache she felt anytime she thought about them was almost unbearable. She would bear that ache, though, sooner than let herself ever forget them, and so she recalled them to her mind frequently. She wore her mother's favorite jewelry and her favorite perfume, and she read books her father had had in his library and listened to his favorite composers to keep them with her. Her parents had been her world, but now they were gone and here she was, trying to make her way in this overwhelming new world of hers.

The young woman with the broken leg was on Carlisle's mind again. He wondered how she felt about women securing the right to vote. She was still alive, then. Gray hadn't been sure. She looked to be about Gray's own age, but she wore the clothes of a decade ago—the silhouette and hemline of her dress were unquestionably pre-war. She was lovely, truly beautiful, and Carlisle was clearly in love with her, whoever she was.

Thoughts of the beautiful young woman always left Carlisle feeling very low. Gray waited a few minutes longer in the lobby, watching the humans pass by, instinctively steering clear of her while going about their business, before returning to their suite. She would suggest they hunt that night. Carlisle was like all men—his mood typically improved after a meal.

XIX

A full scale battle royal was brewing in the sweltering July heat, and the battle lines were drawn deep. Reinforcements for both sides continued to descend upon Nashville. Day by day, Gray took it all in.

The other side had money, a seemingly inexhaustible supply of it. Major industry leaders—the railroads, factory owners, liquor producers—were vehemently opposed to women's suffrage and threw huge amounts of money against it. And money moved men far more than any pursuit of justice, Gray feared.

She stood in their suite, staring out the window at the Capitol building, twisting her fingers together and tearing the gloves she wore to shreds. Polls were being continually conducted by both sides, but from what Gray had been able to decipher of human minds so far, she knew that what one said was often not what one thought. Pledges were sought from legislators and alliances formed with powerful men, but Gray feared the Suffs placed far too much faith in them, Governor Roberts in particular. He was no true friend of Women's Suffrage, she feared. He'd agreed to call the special session only because President Wilson—a Tennessean wanting his state and his party to claim the credit for the amendment's passage—cajoled him into it. But that had been a month ago, and he had yet to set a date.

Promises meant nothing. Hadn't Delaware taught them that? That was why the rival forces needed to work together. NAWSA's tact, united arm in arm with the Women's Party's force. As they say—talk softly, but carry a big stick.

"I've been considering Wisconsin." Carlisle said.

Gray let the curtain fall shut. She knew that, of course, but this was the first time he'd brought it up. He wanted them to settle down somewhere. They'd been moving from place to place since she'd awoken to this life, and the majority of that time had been spent far from humans. It was only the past several months she'd been strong enough to be amongst them.

"What do you think?" he asked her.

For the rest of their kind nomadic lives were the norm, but not for Carlisle. Not for her either, she didn't think. He wanted to practice medicine again. Could she do it, though? It would mean leaving who she'd been behind forever. They'd registered at the hotel under the name of Lincoln, taken from the Chicago neighborhood where she'd lived with her parents, but this would mean resigning her father's name once and for all. She didn't know if she was ready for that yet.

"Isn't that too near?" The Wisconsin boarder was not very far from Chicago.

"I'm thinking Northern Wisconsin, along the coastline."

"Oh."

"There's no rush."

No rush. It was nearly two years since he'd taken her from parents' home and saved her life. Two years could hardly be called a rush.

"If you think it best," she said.

He looked at her for a long moment, then scoffed jokingly.

_If I think it best? What kind of answer is that for a suffragist?_

XIX

Another tree crashed to the ground. Twenty acres of forest lay in ruins.

Men and their ego, their rivalries, their perfect inability to see beyond the end of their own noses—

Gray didn't need to hunt as frequently as she had a year ago, but she still needed to feed more often than Carlisle. There were woods enough close to Nashville that they could leave after sundown and return before sunup, but that night they'd run all the way to the the Smokey Mountains. It would be better for one particular newspaper owner that she stayed away until she was sure she could be within a mile of him and not—

Another tree.

She screamed, lifting it over her head and hurling it fifty yards away. Her chest and shoulders heaved in white hot fury. She could level the entire forest. This—this was an example of the sort of honorable, chivalrous man who women were supposed to entrust with their wellbeing!

Gray had known the Suffs had been wrong to put so much trust in men's words!

The Kiwanis Club of Nashville had called a special meeting on Friday, and Mrs. Catt had been the guest speaker. Carlisle and she had sneaked into the basement before dawn and waited. It had been Mrs. Catt's first public speaking event in the city, and Gray hadn't wanted to miss a word of it.

She'd been brilliant.

"We have just emerged from the greatest war ever known, which was fought for liberty and democracy," she'd said. But where was democracy for American women? In more than twenty countries, women were voting. It was a matter of national pride, she'd told them. All across the country—all across the world—all eyes were on Tennessee.

The room applauded loudly, and Gray had been spellbound.

After the meeting, Edward Stahlman, owner of one of the two newspapers in Tennessee, the _Nashville Banner_, had introduced himself and pledged his support. He supported Governor Roberts in the upcoming primary, and he used his paper's editorial pages to promote the governor's re-election campaign.

Another tree.

Two days later, the _Banner_ had published a scathing letter written by a leading Anti, attacking Mrs. Catt, in its front section.

Its owner clearly had a different definition of the word _support _than Gray did. She seriously doubted he'd make a promise to Alice Paul and then brake it two days later. She'd burn his precious paper down around him.

Papa would never have broken his word.

Gray lay her hands on another tree, ready to send it crashing to the ground, but a new voice entered her head, and she froze, her head snapping toward the newcomer. Carlisle was at her side in an instant.

"Someone's coming," she said, anxious. She hadn't meet any other vampires yet. She heard nothing alarming in the newcomer's thoughts, but she was not in a trusting mood.

Carlisle's were the only other thoughts she could hear, which made separating the newcomer's easier. He was not like them. He was a human-feeder.

More important, he was an unknown. He was a potential threat.

She cursed herself. She'd led him to them.

"He heard all the noise."

"Alright," Carlisle said.

_Not alright. _Gray hissed, and she bared her teeth.

_Do you hear something threatening?_ Carlisle asked her.

She shook her head. Not yet, at least, but she was fully on her guard.

_One, or more?_

She shook her head a second time.

_One. Male?_

She nodded.

The newcomer crossed their scents and started to run toward them. He'd recognized Carlisle's.

"He knows you," she said, her posture relaxing but her mind still uneasy. Carlisle had many friends among their kind, he'd told her, and the newcomer was glad to come across him.

He was still an unknown to her, though, and her instinct to defend herself was hard to resist. Trust did not come naturally to them.

Or, not to her at any rate. Carlisle grinned widely. He patted her shoulder and moved in the direction of the newcomer, also glad to encounter a friend. She followed close at his side. She didn't like this. She felt restless and uncomfortable, her fingers twitching and venom flowing into her mouth.

The breeze carried the newcomer's scent to them, and Gray learned his name as memories flooded Carlisle's thoughts.

"You'll like him," Carlisle assured her before calling his name out loudly. "Garrett!"

Gray didn't respond. She scanned the dense, dark trees, searching for her first sight of the newcomer.

When it came, she saw a very tall man with shaggy, shoulder length dark hair. His jaw was covered with stubble, and his wide grin reached his bright, ruby red eyes. She ignored the superficial, her focus riveted on his height and the teeth gleaming white in the moonlight.

Carlisle greeted him warmly and held his arm out to her, calling her forward. "Come and meet an old friend," he said.

Garrett's eyes flitted between them, and his grin widened.

_Carlisle has found a mate._

"No," she said firmly, her eyes narrowing.

Carlisle looked at her questioningly.

"He assumes wrongly."

Garrett's eyebrow arched, and his eyes rested on Carlisle.

"Gray can read minds," Carlisle said matter-of-factly.

Both of Garrett's eyebrows shot up, and his thoughts instantly scrambled.

"Nice try, but not nearly enough," she said, taking a step forward. It wasn't entirely true. She was able to unscramble them, but not without difficulty. Had anyone else been within three miles, she doubted she'd have been able to straighten them out.

He eyed her for a moment, glancing again at Carlisle.

"We are not lovers," she stated.

Shocked, Carlisle coughed.

Garrett laughed to mask his discomfort. "Useful talent you've got there," he said. He was leery of her, but he trusted Carlisle enough to extend that trust to her, albeit cautiously.

"Garrett and I met at the Battle of Yorktown," Carlisle said.

Slowly, Gray nodded. She had no idea what the Battle of Yorktown was, but she wasn't about to let that on in front of the newcomer. The history she'd studied as a human had been lost in her transformation. She'd fought to keep what mattered most, and history hadn't been it.

_1781_, Carlisle told her. _The American Revolution._

The newcomer was curious about her, how they'd met.

"I was dying. Carlisle changed me."

Carlisle smiled at her warmly, proud of her. There was nothing aggressive in the newcomer's thoughts or actions. His thoughts only showed a genuine fondness for Carlisle. She tried to not feel so suspicious of him, but she couldn't help it.

"You're not residing down here, surely?" he asked. "With a newborn?"

Gray stuck her chin out at the newcomer's assumption she was still a newborn, until she saw images in his mind of a small group black clad figures slaughtering large numbers of vampires. The condemned screamed and writhed, no one yet touching them, as two of the figures in black leisurely walked among them, killing them one by one. They didn't fight back. They didn't even attempt to run. They just waited, convulsing in agony, until it was their turn. A shiver ran through her. The ones in black, they were the Volturi. Carlisle had warned her about them, and their gifts. What crime had all of those vampires committed? And what did it have to do with the area that led the newcomer to question Carlisle's being there with her?

"We're only here for a few weeks," Carlisle said. "The humans are considering the passage of legislation regarding women's enfranchisement. It's very important to Gray to see the result."

Gray was surprised to see the newcomer well informed on the details.

"You follow human goings on?" she asked skeptically.

"Haven't missed an American battle yet. Didn't want to miss this one."

"Do you expect bloodshed?"

"A fight is a fight. I fought against oppression once. I came to see it fought against again."

She hummed. His thoughts showed him to be sincere, although he was motivated solely by an innate approval of an underdog standing up against an oppressor. What the fight was over was irrelevant. One fight really was as good as any other. She bristled, both at his dismissive attitude toward the Cause and at the Suffs being labeled underdogs.

The newcomer and Carlisle caught up since the last time they'd seen each other decades ago. He lamented over a story about almost biting Custer that Carlisle had clearly heard before. She should probably know who Custer was, but she had no idea. She would have to do some reading, clearly.

If the newcomer thought the acres upon acres of leveled forest odd, she didn't hear it.

Never since waking up to this life had Gray had to share Carlisle's attention. She felt jealous. He enjoyed her company, but they had no history together, not like he shared with the newcomer. It surprised her, the strength of her possessiveness.

The scent of a mountain lion drifted to them, and Gray's attention was drawn to it. The newcomer thought their diet bizarre. He couldn't understand it, or how they could surround themselves with humans, live among them. He thought it bizarre, but he'd never given Carlisle any of the flack others did. She knew he'd had to defend his choice to feed only from animals, and that she would have to as well.

"Go on," Carlisle said.

She startled. Go—_alone_? She'd never hunted alone before. She'd never gone anywhere without Carlisle before.

She'd never gone anywhere alone, ever.

For the past two years, she'd never been far from Carlisle's side, and before that—during her human life—the idea of her going anywhere alone would've been unthinkable. If she wasn't with her parents or their friends, she was accompanied by a maid.

The animal's scent grew stronger. It was unknowingly stalking closer to them, and she wanted to feed.

Carlisle was absorbed in his old friend, glad they'd come across each other. For the first time since she'd first heard his thoughts even before she'd opened her eyes to this life, she was no where in them. She bit the inside of her lip. She was torn—stay with Carlisle, or hunt.

The newcomer glanced at her. He wondered what she was waiting for, whether she might not be as devoted to their diet as Carlisle was. Was it fair for Carlisle to impose it on her? he asked himself.

Defiant, she met his eyes. She squared her shoulders and stuck out her chin before turning and taking off in the direction of her prey.

The very moment she started to run, even before her foot hit the ground, instinct took over. Every one of her heightened senses fixed on her prey. She leapt through the air, catlike, and scaled a tall poplar. She moved through the canopy in perfect silence, the steady beating of the animal's heart calling to her like a siren, the warm, rich scent of its blood flooding her mouth with venom.

Without warning, the breeze changed direction, carrying her scent toward the animal, and in an instant, it tore off through the woods. She grinned. The chase was on. There was no holding back. Stealth was abandoned for pure speed. When she ran full out, she felt more alive than she could ever remember feeling as a human. She leapt through the air and let out a loud whoop of pure joy.

Predator suddenly turned prey, the cat ran with all its strength, but its speed was nothing compared to hers. She was behind it in no time. Its tawny fur gleamed in the moonlight as she pounced. The cat growled, but before it could make any attempt to defend itself, its neck was broken. If Gray thought of a certain newspaper owner as she slammed the animal to the ground and sunk her teeth into it, no one need ever know.

She drained the cat quickly, savoring its warmth as it seeped through her. She wanted more, and she stayed motionless, listening. Leaves rustled, and small nocturnal creatures scurried for food. In the distance, an owl hooted. Slowly, she rose. She inhaled deeply, but she could neither hear nor smell any prey. She grinned. No worry, it was out there somewhere. She'd find it.

In a flash, she took off racing eastward.

Well-born young ladies didn't run, she'd been told all her life. Well, look at her now. She ran faster than she ever had, as much just for the sheer joy of it as to find prey. She laughed as she flew through the trees, running without direction or care. The speed—There could be no greater thrill than this. It was exhilarating.

She passed herds of deer hidden in the trees, but she ignored them. She wanted a predator, and she wasn't settling.

There!

In an instant, she changed course, running more northward. A black bear, already on the run from her. The breeze had carried her scent toward him before she'd caught his, but she caught up quickly. Its speed less the mountain lion's, it gave her no chase, but at twice the weight, it was more sport to take down.

Her thirst sated after the bear, she wondered where she was. She could've run all the way to North Carolina for all she knew. She heard the sound of the running water in the distance, and she followed it to wash the remains of her meal away. She never managed to stay as clean as Carlisle.

The river was wide enough to split the trees and expose the clear, starry sky above. It was a range of the darkest navy blues and purples, too dark for human eyes to appreciate. There were so many stars, and there, running through all of it was a band of glowing white, the Milky Way. Gray stood, transfixed by the beauty of it.

In that moment, apart from the forest and the running water, the world around her was quiet and peaceful. It was nice. The human world was filled with so much noise, so much ruckus, that to be surrounded by peace and quiet was lovely.

But the quiet wasn't just around her, it was inside her as well. Inside her head. The voices were gone, even Carlisle's. Gray closed her eyes. For the first time in nearly two years, the only thoughts inside her head were her own, and oh, the relief. It was bliss. Standing there in the light of the moon and the stars, she was alone for the first time in her life, and to her surprise she was finding she relished it. All her life, she'd been ruled by expectations—whether she'd comported to them or not. First her family's and then Carlisle's. What were her own expectations for herself? She had decisions to make.

Hours passed as she stood there, and clouds moved in, obscuring the stars. Even in the middle of the night, the July heat persisted. The air was heavy and humid, and she could smell the rain expected the next day. As the horizon began to brighten behind the increasing cloud cover, Carlisle's voice entered her head, followed a moment later by Garrett's.

_I was beginning to think you'd run all the way to the Atlantic Ocean_, Carlisle said when they reached her. Glad as he was to see his friend, he was more so to see her. He and Garret were friends, but he and she were a family. _You looked serene, standing there. You enjoyed your run?_

"I did."

Garrett wondered what question she'd answered.

She'd enjoyed her run and her time alone, and as she'd stood there, she decided something.

Both sides in the suffrage argument—the Suffs and the Antis—had their supporters running all across the state in a mad race to secure votes. Gray didn't want to wait it out, sitting on her hands in Nashville, waiting for news to trickle in. She wished she could participate, but she knew that was out of the question. Reporters were behind every corner armed with more than just notepads; there were cameras everywhere one turned. Someone who was believed to have died in Chicago in 1918 could not be photographed in Nashville in 1920. It would be catastrophic. But that didn't mean she couldn't be out there, where the fight was going on. She could hide in a hotel room in one city as well as in another.

"I don't want to go back to Nashville, not yet," she said. "I want to be out there, where it's all happening." They'd headed eastward when they'd left Nashville, but she didn't know where they were exactly. It didn't particularly matter. Pick any large city in the state, and it would be inundated by both sides by then.

* * *

End notes:

The first eleven states to ratify the 19th amendment were:

Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan 6/10/1919

Kansas, New York, and Ohio 6/16

Pennsylvania 6/24

Massachusetts 6/25

Texas 6/28

Iowa 7/2

Missouri 7/3


	2. Chapter 2

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement is intended. All publicly recognizable fictional characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. All historical figures are represented as accurately as possible.

* * *

The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain.

Susan B. Anthony

* * *

Chapter 2

XIX

The city they'd been closest to was Chattanooga.

A young Suff from the Women's Party named Anita Pollitzer was working the area. Unlike Mrs. Catt, she was a Southerner—from Charleston. She spoke the right way and said the right things and had a knack for getting powerful men to tell her what she needed to know. Two years ago, she'd been arrested for picketing on the steps of the U.S. Capitol and dragged down the Senate steps. She was intelligent, shrewed, and observant, and she was implacable. Gray thought she was marvelous.

She had already meet with seventy-year-old former U.S. Senator Newell Sanders. Senator Sanders was a firm suffrage supporter, and he was respected throughout the state. He'd spent the entire afternoon educating her on everything she needed to know about party politics, from the factions and feuds, to who gave orders to whom, to the issues. He'd told her who she needed to get hold of, who would be slippery, and who to expect trouble from. Among them was Jesse Littleton, who was running for the gubernatorial nomination. Littleton was an attorney, representing the liquor interests, which did not bode well for his support of women's suffrage. She'd met with him first thing. Littleton had struck her as an oily sort, but surprisingly, he'd sworn himself to be firmly in favor of suffrage for women. Moving on, she was currently on a train from Chattanooga to Athens to hunt down Tennessee Senate floor leader Herschel Candler, another name on her list.

Senator Candler was dangerous—he was both anti-suffrage and influential. If he could be worked on and brought around, it would be huge. She planned to first find his friends and talk to them, then to Candler himself if she could manage it, and also to his protégé, Harry Burn.

Carlisle and Gray rode on the same train. They traveled in a first class compartment, not out of a desire for comfort but of necessity. When they moved amongst humans, they attracted attention. It was unavoidable. The Women's Party was always cash-strapped, by their traveling in first, there was little chance of their path accidentally crossing hers.

They unsurprisingly had their compartment to themselves, and Gray sat with her hands covering her eyes as she held her breath and focused all her attention on Anita Pollitzer. Spending more time among humans, and longer periods of time among the same humans, she had time and opportunity to work on mastering her ability to hear other's thoughts. She'd learned that people's mental voice resembled their physical voice, and their speech and thought patterns correlated. Previously, she'd tried to search all the various streams of thought in her head for particular words or phrases that might indicate a potential threat, but she'd found it nearly impossible. She might find the word, but she couldn't isolate the particular thread it belonged to from all the rest for long enough to learn anything of value. Her plan now was to listen for a particular voice, rather than listening for particular words. It was something like trying to pick out a face from a crowd, only the crowd was of hundreds of thousands, and you'd never seen the face. She still felt like a peeping Tom, intentionally listening to people's personal thoughts, but their safety—Carlisle's and hers—was paramount. She remembered the shrieks of the condemned vampires in Garrett's mind, the awful metallic screeching as they were torn into pieces, and the swirling spirals of purple-black smoke as they'd burned. Scruples be damned. She had a gift, a tool, and she had to master it to protect them both. This was the best practice she could hope for.

Success!

Anita Pollitzer was writing a report to Alice Paul, head of the Women's Party. Regarding James Littleton, she wrote, "He is a slick Cox-like politician, only he wears white and weighs 300 lbs!" She added, "He appears to be friendly, but his face does such queer things when I pin him down." Regarding her next quarry, she added, "We must make an effort to get Candler as he leads men. He will hurt us unless he can be convinced."

Gray sat back and smiled, well satisfied. That had been the most she'd ever been able to gather by far, and Carlisle beamed at her in approval.

XIX

Immediately upon arriving in Athens, Anita Pollitzer got to work. Gray had heard her plan in her head, and Carlisle and she followed a safe distance behind as a light rain sprinkled down. She first visited the county chairman for local information. Senator Candler, she learned, was out of town, but she had other names on her list. She got a pledge of support from her first target, but the next was firmly opposed to women's suffrage. Remaining was a Harry Burn, Senator Candler's young protégé.

Representative Burn was 24-years-old, younger than Pollitzer herself by a year, and the youngest member of the legislature. The freshman representative lived in a town with a population of only 467, and logistically, getting there proved too impractical to attempt. Instead, she had his county chairman in Athens telephone him.

Burn was still uncommitted one way or the other, but he had voted for the limited suffrage bill the year before and the chairman assured her of his support. When the call was put through and the young legislator came on the line, the chairman and he had a brief conversation before the chairman again assured her Burn would be all right, and she marked him down as a Yes.

Next, she was on to Knoxville.

XIX

In Knoxville, Miss Pollitzer took a room at a hotel and again went straight to work, doing what she did best. She talked to people, important people and the people around them. She gathered information, and made it look easy. One name that again came up as crucial was Senator Candler.

Senator Candler's stance on suffrage was firm: "I unalterably oppose suffrage and shall vote against the bill."

That was pretty clear. And pretty final. Where she hoped to work on him was somewhere else.

Possibly the sharpest arrow in the Anti's quiver was the argument that was picking up steam that the current sitting legislature was prohibited from voting on the amendment by Constitution of the State of Tennessee.

After ratification of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—forbidding slavery and giving freed slaves all of the rights and protections of citizenship—the Tennessee Constitution had been rewritten to include a provision that any proposed federal amendments could not be considered until after the next election. Only that way, it was claimed, could the voice of the electorate regarding the amendment be heard. Based on that clause in the state constitution, the Antis argued that the question of ratification could not be heard until after the election. Tennesseans had a right to know where anyone representing them stood on a proposed federal amendment and to send legislators to Nashville who shared their opinion on ratification.

The United States Supreme Court had ruled that the clause stood in conflict with the U.S. Constitution, but the Antis continued to promote the argument, and legislators were falling for it. The Supreme Court ruling spoke, but the Antis shouted. Senator Candler was admired, respected, and articulate, and he was a vocal proponent of the argument.

As Gray and Carlisle followed the young Suff through the city, a notable pattern emerged. Those already pledged in support had begun to waiver, and those unpledged dodged. The constitutional question was taking hold.

Anita Pollitzer was fatigued and frustrated, but she was undettered. She had not yet succeeded in meeting with Senator Candler, but she persisted. At length, she secured the promise of a United States congressman that he would try to get a hold of the elusive state senator, but he failed. Fed up, she grabbed the congressman's telephone and asked for the Athens town operator. When the operator was reached, Pollitzer demanded in a breathless and urgent voice, "This is a matter of life and death. Congressman Taylor must speak with Senator Candler."

The elusive Senator Candler was on the phone within in a matter of minutes, but even when pressed by his state party chairman he stated, "My oath office would not permit."

Gray was growing dispirited. Things were not going well. The constitutional question was hurting them. Headlines were bad, and rumors were running wild. The governor was up for re-election and facing a primary challenger in a week's time. If he lost to his challenger, all bets about whether he would keep his promise of calling the special session were off. But even if he did survive the primary, he could balk. He could chose to keep things as they were, preserve the status quo for the election in November—not risk alienating Anti voters while running no risk of irate Suffs voting against him. The partial suffrage bill that had been passed the year before gave women in Tennessee the presidential vote, but not the gubernatorial. And there was talk that he himself was leery of the constitutional question. Others claimed he would call the special session, but Anti forces would bury the amendment in committee until time ran out. The special session, if called, would be limited to no more than twenty days. Less than three weeks. It would be easy for the Antis in the legislature to delay for that long. Carrie Catt had arrived in Knoxville, and Gray knew she and all the Suffs were worried.

On the night of August 2nd, long after most of the humans around them were asleep, Gray and Carlisle were in their suite. He was reading papers recently published by a noted Austrian biologist, and she was staring staring at a book she wasn't reading.

Then things went from bad to worse.

Suddenly, someone was heard running through the halls of their otherwise quiet hotel, followed by frantic pounding on a door. They knew whose door it was. Gray heard the panicked thoughts a NAWSA Suff, and she gasped.

"Mrs. Catt has had a heart attack."

Carrie Chapman Catt _was_ the NAWSA. If she were to be lost, now, at this most critical moment . . . What would happen to the chances the amendment would be ratified without her?

At almost the same moment those thoughts passed through Gray's head, she berated herself for thinking them. A woman—a great woman—could be dying only yards away, and her first concern was for what impact her death would have on ratification. She'd never known herself to be so selfish, and the discovery rattled her.

Carlisle put his hand on her shoulder. "Listen," he said. "Locate her voice in your mind. Ignore everything else. What do you hear?"

Gray squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath. _Focus_, she told herself anxiously. _Find her voice. _

It was easier in the middle of the night, with almost everyone around them asleep. There was no less noise inside her head, but it was a very different kind of noise. Dreams were as easy to separate from conscious thought as day was from night. Two women were with Mrs. Catt now—the one who'd gone to summon help and the one she'd gone to summon it from. Gray had made progress isolating one single strand of thought in her head and keeping it isolated. Now, with less interference, she tried three at once. It took concentration, but she could follow each individually. Two were panicked; the third—Mrs. Catt herself—was annoyed. She was sitting up and alert, and adamantly insisting she was fine, but the other two only saw their leader and friend pale, perspiring, and dizzy. Gray could hear how much Mrs. Catt hated appearing to be ill, that she considered it to be a sign of weakness, validation of men's calling women "the weaker sex." She suffered these little spells, Mrs. Catt insisted. She lived with them. She left out that her little spells were a symptom of a chronic heart condition and her doctor's orders to rest more and avoid stress—orders she never followed.

Angina was Carlisle's diagnosis based on what Gray relayed. Not life-threatening on it's own, but as Gray had heard from Mrs. Catt herself, it was a painful and frightening a symptom of her underlying disorder.

"She'll be alright, though?" Gray asked, anxious.

Carlisle took her hands but didn't meet her eyes. He was worried about her. Gray could hear what he didn't say out loud. It wasn't a good idea to invest herself too deeply in the lives of the humans they encountered. Interact with them, but don't let them inside. They occupied the same space, but they lived in different worlds. The human world wasn't hers any longer. Not for the first time, he questioned himself whether he'd been wrong in changing her—had he saved her, or condemned her? Had he acted for her, or for himself? He squeezed her fingers and left her alone.

Gray had already known her world wasn't hers anymore, but she didn't truly understand the entirety of that until that moment. Not just her world, but _the_ world wasn't hers anymore. It was a powerful realization. Wherever they went, it wouldn't be hers. They, Carlisle and she, would come, and they would stay for a while, but then they would leave and not look back. They would go somewhere else and do it again. That endless repetition had been his existence for over two centuries. The loneliness had to have been crippling.

That existence was hers now too. She would go on, frozen at seventeen for as long as she lived. After five or six decades, everyone she'd ever known would be gone, but she would still be seventeen. Always on the verge of a life that would never begin.

XIX

The next day dawned, as countless more would after it. The two women with Mrs. Catt had persuaded her to rest the following day. One of them—Abby Milton, Gray had learned—lived in nearby Chattanooga, and it had been agreed that Mrs. Catt would spend the day there, resting.

Mrs. Catt did spend the next day at the Milton home as planned, but far from resting, Gray could hear that reports were being telephoned in to her regularly, and she fired off fiercely worded telegrams to both presidential candidates. The Antis had formed a coalition of self-appointed guardians of the state constitution, the Constitutional League—many of whom were from outside of the state—and had sent letters to both Warren Harding and James Cox, demanding they keep "hands off" Tennessee. Catt's telegrams demanded they keep hands on.

After just one day supposedly resting, Mrs. Catt was back in Knoxville and back in action and preparing to give an address to the Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce. In addition to the presidential candidates, the Antis had also written to every state legislator.

"We ask you, as a sworn officer of our State Government, to stand with us . . . for the upholding of the honor of Tennessee and the rights of our people as guaranteed in our Constitution," they wrote. "We feel justified in saying that you have not the right to . . . foreclose your freedom of action by any promise, express or implied. Your own obligation to obey the constitution rises above any party or personal consideration."

The Suffs were rightly worried. The Antis had found a gold mine. It gave undecided legislators an easy out, and it raised questions in the minds of supporters. If the constitutional question was not countered quickly, it would derail everything.

During the night, Carlisle and she had sneaked in to the hotel where the speech was to be held and hidden themselves. It was an interminably long wait. Patience was not a virtue Gray possessed, but she had enough to think about as the time passed. She took Carlisle's hand and squeezed it. His friend's first assumption on seeing them together was that they were a mated couple. She had no feelings of that sort for Carlisle, nor had he for her. Gray feared the girl she saw in his mind so often, the girl with the broken leg, was the one who owned that part of him and always would. Gray still had a lot to learn about her new life, but she knew that they did not change often. When they fell in love, they did not fall out. The girl in his memories would be it for him, and she was lost to him. Gray suspected whoever she was, she had played a role in his decision to change her. Not as a substitute for the one he couldn't have, but rather, that he simply could no longer go on alone.

XIX

By noon, two hundred prominent men and women had gathered in the ballroom of the Hotel Patten to hear Mrs. Catt. The two women who had been with her on the night of her attack were seated at the head table. Gray was by then familiar enough with the mental voices of all three women that separating them from the rest was becoming easier. Both women were worried about Mrs. Catt's heart, and from her hiding space, Gray twisted her fingers together right along with them.

Their fears were unfounded. Mrs. Catt launched into her speech with an unadulterated fury beyond what either woman had expected or ever heard from her before.

"Here in Tennessee the suffrage battle is being fought by those who do not live in Tennessee," Mrs. Catt argued.

Gray grimaced. The Antis were going to jump all over that. Mrs. Catt herself was from New York.

"Their way is to put a few publicity-seeking women in the spotlight, while they themselves work in stealth." Like a prosecutor before a jury, Mrs. Catt methodically laid out her case for the crowd. "Some weeks ago from New York came emissaries of this group, to organize a men's Constitutional League in Tennessee and they seem to be finding men willing to play into their hands," she said. "They do not appear to be behind the opposition, but when they send to Cox and Harding messages to 'leave Tennessee alone' you may know it is this little band of determined New York reactionaries who are behind it."

Gray groaned. A New Yorker come to Tennessee, complaining about New Yorkers come to Tennessee. The Antis were going to have a field day.

"These are the same New York people who call women 'skirts' and cry loudly that 'woman's place is in the home'." The normally composed and diplomatic Mrs. Catt was letting her emotions carry her away. "The opponents of suffrage are trying to fool the people of Tennessee about the state constitution," she accused. "All the Antis are getting behind the 'constitutional objection'."

All of the tension and frustration of the past weeks had pushed her to the end of her rope, and they came pouring out. She had left her normal stump speech in the dust and had abandoned her notes. Reporters were furiously writing in their notebooks, gleefully recording every word, knowing the headlines to come and the sales they would generate.

"You can fool the people of Tennessee, but you can't fool posterity," she promised. "If you won't consider the suffrage amendment, the action of the legislature will pass into history as a testimonial to the stupidity of Tennessee. You may think you are right, but posterity will laugh."

Gray dropped her head into her hands. That was it. They were done. Pack it up, everyone, and go home. It was over. She didn't want to know what the crowd was thinking, but she could hear Abby Milton and Marjorie Shuler mentally wince with every line. Insulting people was not the way to bring them over to your side in an argument.

"Go to see your representatives and senators, and set them right. Let them understand that if they want to claim that their oaths prevent their considering suffrage, they do so in response to the wish and will of reactionaries, woman haters, who hope to keep women disenfranchised forever!"

XIX

The reaction of the Antis was as fast and as strong as Gray had feared, but just as importantly, they took Mrs. Catt uncharacteristic tirade as evidence that the Suffs felt themselves slipping, and this bolstered them in their attacks.

Back in Nashville, Josephine Pearson, a leading Anti, wrote to presidential candidate James Cox in a blistering tirade of underlining and exclamation points.

"Can anything more outside in its influences than Mrs. Catt—an alien in blood and in sentiment to every Southern instinct and inheritance—ever have come to Tennessee? That we, opposing Ratification in Tennessee, have and may employ every available ability, both state and national, to defeat the Federal Amendment that bears the name Susan B. Anthony—who was an organizer and propagator of Abolition—out of which Female suffrage is an unmistakable historical child—we do not deny but proclaim!" Women's suffrage was an "infection germ" to the South, she wrote. She warned that he should have no part in such a plot if he hoped to win southern votes. Public sentiment in Tennessee was opposed to ratification, she said, and offered Mrs. Catt's "hysterical" pleas for help as proof.

Gray listened in increasing frustration as the woman grew more and more triumphant with each line she wrote. Women like Josephine Pearson were both an enigma and an anathema to Gray—educated women opposed to women's suffrage. They made as much sense to her as a rose opposed to sunlight. They were an affront to sense and logic.

Carlisle and she had returned to Nashville after the disastrous speech in Knoxville. Today was the day of the primary and special election to fill vacant seats in the legislature, and she had wanted to witness the results as they came in. For better or worse, so much of what was to come would be decided that day. In the time they'd been gone, the hotel seemed to have filled to bursting with Antis. They'd come from all over the state, and all over the country, and more were expected.

The wait for the polls to close felt like it would never end. When it finally arrived, the ballot boxes were opened and the votes tallied, and that seemed to take longer still. As the evening progressed, people began to gather outside the offices of the _Nashville Banner_, where a large screen had been hung across the street. Carlisle and she joined the crowd, careful to stay in the back. Slowly, results started to trickle in, telephoned into the newsroom by reporters stationed around the state. Then, like something out of an H. G. Wells novel, those results were projected onto the screen.

"Have you ever seen. . . ?" Gray asked, mesmerized.

No, he'd never seen anything like it.

The crowd had grown to hundreds, all come to witness the miracle of modern technology—breaking news flashing before their very eyes. They crowd stood, amazed, as the results lit up the screen until almost midnight.

In the end, Governor Roberts had defeated his primary challenger by twenty thousand votes. Jesse Littleton, who Anita Pollitzer had met with in Chattanooga and instantly disliked, had lost his overwhelmingly. Very importantly, most of the men elected to fill vacancies in the legislature were pledged to ratify. That was certainly better than the alternative, but Gray took it with a very large grain of salt. The Suffs were still putting too much faith in pledged support, even in the face of the constitutional question.

Two days after the election, on Saturday, August 7, Governor Roberts put all speculation over his intentions to bed and formally called the General Assembly to meet in an extraordinary session to begin at noon on Monday, August 9. The final battle in a war that had begun over seventy years earlier would begin in less than forty-eight hours.

* * *

End notes:

I hope you liked chapter two! Drop me a review and let me know what you thought. Like it, didn't like it. Let me know. A teaser for chapter three for all reviewers! The special session to decide the question of women's suffrage began on August 9th, and it begins in chapter three, so chapter three will post on August 9th, the 99th anniversary of the opening of the session. Apart from this chapter, chapters will all post on the 99th anniversaries of important moments. I'll post a teaser for chapter three on Facebook group Twilight FanFiction Pays it Forward, groups 896806390388220, a couple of days before it posts. I hope you'll check it out! Follow the story for an alert when it posts!


	3. Chapter 3

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement is intended. All publicly recognizable fictional characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. All historical figures are represented as accurately as possible.

* * *

_. . .We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men and women are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . ._

_. . .Resolved, That it is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise. . . ._

_. . .In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object. We shall employ agents, circulate tracts, petition the state and national legislatures, and endeavor to enlist the pulpit and the press in our behalf. We hope this Convention will be followed by a series of Conventions, embracing every part of the country._

_Firmly relying upon the final triumph of the Right and the True, we do this day affix our signatures to this declaration._

Declaration of Sentiments, The Seneca Falls Convention, Seneca Falls, NY, July 19 – 20, 1848

The Seneca Falls Convention is considered the start of the women's rights movement in the United States. Organized by women, the gathering to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of woman was attended by about three hundred people. The Declaration of Sentiments, or Declaration of of Rights and Sentiments, outlines the rights American women should be entitled to as citizens and was signed by one hundred of the attendees, including thirty-two men. The first day of the two day gathering had been announced as being exclusively for women, but mothers brought their sons as well as their daughters and about forty men also showed up. The men were not turned away, but they were asked to remain quiet. More men attended the second day, and the meetings were chaired by men, as women could not chair a meeting in which men were to participate.

The Declaration contained twelve resolutions, eleven of which passed unanimously. The only one that did not was the ninth, that it was the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to vote.

Our story picks back up seventy years and twenty days later.

* * *

_Chapter 3_

XIX

It was being called "the Tennessee War of the Roses" in all the newspapers. Standing at the window, looking down at the streets teeming with people, Gray let the curtain fall shut, and she stepped back.

There were an awful lot of red roses out there.

She picked up one of the books Carlisle had gotten her and flipped through the pages, but soon gave up and set it back down.

The Antis were intolerable. By then, the thoughts of Josephine Pearson stood out in Gray's mind like the squawking of a flock of geese that never stopped. She rubbed her forehead. It seemed impossible to her now how much effort it would've taken to single out the woman's thoughts only weeks ago. Now she worked to drown them out in all the rest.

As legislators were scrambling to get to Nashville from all across the state, Miss Pearson was preparing to have her photograph taken in front of the Anti-Ratification headquarters she'd established on the mezzanine level. She wore three red roses pinned to her dress as a symbol of her status as president of the Tennessee State Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage and a smug, self-satisfied half-smile. Gray wanted to see both knocked off—the roses and the smile.

While this was happening on the mezzanine, the Suffs were on the third floor welcoming an important ally. Harriet Upton, president of the Ohio state suffrage organization had arrived. Like Mrs. Catt, Upton was one of "Aunt Susan's girls." The daughter of an Ohio congressman, Upton was well-versed in the realities of politics. She was intelligent and experienced, and she knew both presidential candidates well. She knew how to make the right friends, and she knew how to fight to win. Gray liked her already.

It did mean yet another outsider, though, another Yankee, and as Gray had expected, the Antis were throwing all of Mrs. Catt's allegations about outsiders come to Tennessee back in her face. But Mrs. Catt had an ace up her sleeve, and she played it then—a letter written by Lady Nancy Astor, first woman ever to sit in the British Parliament and a Virginian by birth, which she released to the press. Lady Astor came from a prominent Virginia family, and her father had been a Confederate officer. She was no outsider. She wrote as a Southerner to other Southerners, touting the strong sense of justice of Southern men, of their honor and chivalry, declaring that that chivalry should be representative of the present day and not only of the past, that it should be equal to the needs of the women of today, not merely what was demanded of it in the old days.

Gray thought it had been laid on a bit thickly, but men tended to like that, she'd found. Whether it would tilt the scale for any wobbling legislators she rather doubted, but Mrs. Catt was right about one thing. It inarguably drove home one point—that not just the eyes of the United States, but the eyes of the whole world were on Tennessee.

Both sides were gathering in Nashville like opposing armies before a battle, and both sides had set up camp in the Hermitage. After sunset, Gray ventured down to the lobby to catch a glimpse. Reporters and photographers were everywhere, but they were after the big fish, not a solitary, unknown Suff. Still, she kept a close watch and kept her head down. The Anti's red roses were fast outnumbering the Suff's yellow.

One thing Gray did notice, and that she could hear other Suffs had also noticed, was the number of men taking the elevators up to the eighth floor. Men wearing both red and yellow roses on their lapels. The Suffs were puzzled, but Gray wasn't. She could smell the alcohol from the lobby, it was being poured so freely in open defiance of Prohibition.

XIX

They hunted that night, sticking to the woods just to the west of Nashville to not be away longer than necessary. The special session could last as little as three days, or as long as twenty. There was no telling. She'd have to hunt again, two or even three times, before it was over if it ran the full time, but she wanted to go and get back before it started. She wouldn't miss the big moment for anything.

Carlisle's friend, Garrett, passed through his mind. He was in the area, drifting around. Doing whatever it was nomads did. If he thought their lifestyle bizarre, she thought the nomads' incomprehensible. What did they _do_ all the time? There were so many hours to fill . . . What did they do to occupy their time? What did they do to occupy their minds?

"I make him uncomfortable," she said. She could hardly expect otherwise. She wouldn't want some stranger riffling through her head either. It was a bleak prospect, but she couldn't expect to encounter many who would be as comfortable around her as Carlisle.

"He's sorry he offended you," Carlisle said, referring to Garret's assumption regarding the nature of their relationship.

"He didn't offend me." That wasn't entirely true, but on reflection, she didn't think the offense she'd taken had been justified. And it certainly hadn't been intended on his part. She'd been rather introspective these past few days, since the time she'd spent alone. "I overreacted."

Carlisle hadn't seen his friend since before the turn of the century. Garrett had no idea the girl with the broken leg existed, Gray was sure, and she was equally sure Carlisle didn't tell him about her when they were alone. Her heart broke for him. To love someone as devotedly as she knew he loved the girl . . . He'd never thought the words expressly, but his memories of her had a tenor to them, an atmosphere that as good as screamed it. To love someone that much and be divided from them forever. She didn't know how he carried on day after day. She didn't think she'd be able to do it.

"I'm sorry I was rude."

"You weren't."

She scoffed.

_You weren't_, he insisted._ You're young still. He was the first of our kind you've met, and we were hunting. It was perfectly natural for you to feel defensive._

She hummed. She'd been more jealous than defensive.

"Why did he think I was still a newborn?"

Carlisle laughed. "Did you not see the acres of leveled forest?"

"I have a temper." She always had.

Gray twisted her fingers together. "Carlisle?"

He turned to her, his head tilted to one side at the sudden hesitation in her voice.

"What did he mean about not residing down here, especially with a newborn?" she asked. "I saw in his mind . . ." She shivered at the image in her mind of the black clad Volturi systematically executing dozens of vampires. The screaming, that was Jane's doing. Carlisle had told her about Jane, and her brother . . . and all the other gifted members of the guard.

Carlisle nodded. "The Southern Wars," he said. "The humans have their history, but we have our own as well."

Gray listened in growing horror as he described how for the past hundred years, covens in the southern part of North America had created armies of newly turned vampires and sought to destroy each other, all to increase their hunting territory. As he spoke, a different variation of the same scene she'd seen in Garrett's mind played itself out in his. It was too awful. She disagreed with the rest of their kind, but they only killed humans to survive themselves. This—this was killing massive numbers of humans, turning them in order to sacrifice them to increase your own territory. It was disgusting, and it was going on at that very moment not far from them.

"It's all well south of here," he assured her.

"Is he part of it? Your friend?"

"Garrett? Heavens, no."

"He seemed to enjoy a good fight."

"He does, but he doesn't create the fight. He isn't the instigator."

Gray wrapped her arms around herself. All those vampires, screaming. Were they the newborns or the creators? Probably both, mixed together and indistinguishable.

"It doesn't seem fair to condemn the newborns to the same fate as their creators. Surely, they could've been taught the importance of secrecy."

"The Volturi doesn't give second chances."

Carlisle came to her and put his hands on her shoulders.

_I've upset you._

"No. I asked you a question, and you answered it." She inhaled deeply and forced herself to shake it off. "I appreciate it." If she wanted to be treated like an adult, she needed to stop acting like a child. Her whole human life she'd been kept in the dark of the harsh realities in the world. She could not go on like that. She did not want to spend the next however long living with her head in the sand.

"Perhaps we'll run into him again," she said.

"Perhaps we will."

She would be more amiable if and when they did. Carlisle had done so much for her, rudeness to his friends was a pretty poor way to repay him.

XIX

Governor Roberts had appointed a man named Albert Williams to oversee the administration's ratification efforts. Roberts himself was in a tough position. He was pro-ratification—seemingly more so now that the primary was behind him—but he was surrounded by advisors who were strongly opposed. Gray felt good about Williams' appointment. He was pro-ratification for the most reliable of all reasons—self-interest. Women, he felt, cared about their children above everything else. Women voters would be likely to prioritize improving education and vote for more funding for schools—and as the superintendent of public instruction, that was good for him. It was in his best interest to keep the troops in line and see that the amendment passed.

The troops being Speaker of the Senate Andrew Todd and Speaker of the House Seth Walker. Speaker Todd was something of a question mark, unlike Speaker Walker. Todd had voted against the limited suffrage bill last year, but he'd promised to support ratification to both local and suffrage leaders and party officials. How much that promise was worth remained to be seen.

Seth Walker was handsome and ambitious, and after last year he was the darling of the Suffs. He had been openly opposed to the limited state suffrage bill that had come up before the legislature last year, but then on the very day of the vote, he unexpectedly took to the floor and spoke strongly in support of its passage. The mouths of those gathered in the gallery had hung open in surprise. The Suffs who'd been there spoke of it to their colleagues as nothing short of a spiritual conversion.

It was Sunday evening and the special session was would start the very next day. Gray felt like she was holding a live wire, electricity crackling through her, but there was nowhere for all that electricity to go. There was nothing she could do. It was an awful feeling, being on the cusp of history potentially being made and being completely unable to participate.

Two women had arrived that afternoon. They made Gray's blood boil, figuratively speaking. Laura Clay and Kate Gordon were former members of NAWSA—Laura Clay had even been one of "Aunt Susan's nieces." They both believed in women's suffrage, but they would only accept it on their own terms—granted by the state, not the federal government, and exclusively to white women. Both were fervent advocates for states' rights and regaining state sovereignty, and maintaining white social and political rule. Both had wanted NAWSA to support state-based suffrage, allowing each state to set their own terms based on their own customs—their goal being to secure the vote for white women while preserving the disenfranchisement of black women.

When Mrs. Catt had become president, she gave in at first, hoping to soften the soil in the south for suffrage to take root, but over time as they and other southern suffragists insisted white-women-only clauses be added to any suffrage proposals, she had refused to acquiesce. Now, rather than see black women get the vote, they'd joined forces with Antis to fight against ratification.

In Mrs. Catt's suite on the third floor, she'd gathered her troops around her for a last minute strategy session. Both women were heavily on her mind. Gray could only imagine the depth of the betrayal she felt. She dreaded seeing them.

How Gray envied all those gathered together on the third floor. She would've given her right arm to be in there with them, talking strategy and making plans. The Suffs wanted a vote held as soon as possible. The Antis wanted to delay—they needed time to get up to their dirty tricks now that the legislators were all in town.

"We are ready for a vote. Enough men have promised to vote for ratification to put it over and there is no necessity for delay," the evening papers had quoted Mrs. Catt as saying. "If the Tennessee solons stand by their pledges, ratification of the 19th Federal Amendment is certain."

_If_ was the key word. _If . . . but, if not. . . ._

The Antis also had their supporters out giving quotes to reporters.

"We know that pledges extracted under coercion and over-persuasion have no direct value." Gray pressed her lips into a thin line. They would know all about that, the Antis. Coercion was right up their alley. "A man will sometimes pledge a woman, as he would marry her, just to get rid of her," they'd gone on to say. That worried Gray because it was true. Hound someone enough and they'll say anything to be rid of you.

As delegates arrived at the train station, the Suffs had been there to greet them, but so had the Antis. Rumors were running wild—men wavering or planning to renege on their word, men having pledged support to both sides, men planning to just not vote. Gray squeezed her eyes shut and rubbed her forehead. So many people were saying so many things, she couldn't keep straight who was saying what and whose thoughts matched their words.

In another room, Sue White from the Woman's Party was doing everything she could to appear calm and in control, but inside she was afraid as she wrote up her daily report to Alice Paul.

"Some reports Antis using money, and other reports that pledged men will not all show up. . . ."

As this was happening upstairs, downstairs in the lobby both sides had dispatched their prettiest young supporters to mingle with and persuade uncommitted legislators. The legislators were lapping it up. Gray doubted a single one of them was thinking about the amendment.

Meanwhile, whiskey and bourbon continued to flow like water up on the eighth floor.

All around her, forces were preparing for battle. All she could do was listen. Never had the hours passed more slowly than they did that night.

XIX

August 9, 1920

Monday morning dawned dark and raining. Gray tried to not see it as a bad omen as stood in front of the window looking out toward the Capitol building. The special session was to begin at noon.

Suffs had come from all over the country, but it had been agreed upon that only Tennesseans would attend the sessions. The rest, including Mrs. Catt, would stay away. She'd been beaten up in the press for days for her slamming the Antis for bringing in outsiders, but that, at least, was one more arrow from the Antis' quiver she could snap in half. When the Antis tried to present Suffs as unfeminine, even grotesque, and ran pictures of men coming home from work to find their children abandoned by their suffragist mothers, the Suffs countered with their own ad campaign featuring pictures of their most beautiful young mothers reading to their children. Now, the Suffs would present a purely Tennessean face to the world. Tennessee's women lobbying Tennessee's legislature in the face of outside influences. At least, that was the NAWSA Suffs' plan.

Sue White from the Women's Party was a native Tennessean herself, but she didn't have the numbers NAWSA had. Too many southern Suffs disapproved of the Women's Party's tactics. She needed all hands on deck, regardless of whether the hands came with a Tennessee accent or a New York one. Though smaller in number, the Women's Party Suffs had been no less active. They'd corralled a number of notable political names in the Volunteer state—from elders to Governor Robert's newly minted gubernatorial opponent, from mayors to a U.S. Congressman—and brought them to Nashville. And they'd made sure the press got statements and photographs. The Rotary, the Lions, the Kiwanis, the American Legion, and the Memphis City Club had all passed resolutions in support of ratification and sent representatives to lobby for passage of the amendment. They all paraded around—and were paraded around—supporting yellow roses in their lapels. It made for an impressive sight, but the Antis had their own brigade out there with their red roses.

In the Hermitage's meeting room, Senate floor leader Herschel Candler had gathered his colleagues to caucus in advance of the opening of special session. This was the man who was so dangerous, who Anita Pollitzer had tried so hard to reach. The whole process was serving as an eye opener for Gray to see just how much of man's behavior is motivated by self-interest. National party leaders wanted their legislators to vote in favor of ratification as a unified bloc. "It is no longer a question of policy; it is a matter of our contribution to a grant of suffrage to which our party is committed and for which our party is in the main responsible," Warren Harding had written. They were the minority party, but with support within the majority split, they held enough seats to sway the results in both chambers. With unanimous support they could claim the credit for the amendment's passage, make it their victory. Senator Candler, though, was sick and tired of being dictated too. He had always been vehemently opposed to women's suffrage, and now, incensed at being told what to do, he was doubly so.

The legislators were being told to vote a certain way for the good of the party, regardless of their own convictions. Party over policy. It shouldn't be that way, but it was. It should disturb her more than it did. It should also disturb her that if it meant persuading even one man to vote yes, she didn't care a whit.

She tried to hear what was being thought in that room, but it was hard. She was finding that the more she heard a person speak out loud, the more able she was to follow their thoughts. There were just too many of them she'd never heard speak before. Their thoughts tangled together in knots.

After the party's sales pitches were made, Senator Candler spoke.

"You have heard those in favor. Is there anyone opposed?"

No one responded, but no one spoke in favor either. The latest poll split the caucus nearly in even thirds, with slightly more both in favor or undecided than opposed, but the lead in favor was slim, and the undecideds were all too susceptible to the Antis' schemes and lies.

Noon came, and all the players took their places in the Capitol building. After the meeting at the Hermitage had broken up, Carlisle and Gray had slipped out of the hotel and into the Capitol building, where they hid in the building's tower. Behind their desks in their respective chambers below, Speakers Todd and Walker pounded their gavels. The special session began.

Not much would happen today, however. Today would be procedural. After new members chosen in the special election were sworn in, the first step of many was the formal transmittal of the federal amendment from the governor to the legislators. In both chambers, clerks read the governor's official submission of the amendment and his accompanying message to the legislature. Anticipation on both sides ran high. No one knew what his message would be or how strongly he would make it.

It was the Suffs who heard what they'd hoped to hear.

"Tennessee occupies a pivotal position on this question. The eyes of all America are upon us. Millions of women are looking to the Tennessee legislature to give them a voice and share in the shaping of the destiny of the republic." Both parties' platforms endorsed ratification, he reminded them, and they had a responsibility to their party as well as to their constituents. "But there is another and higher ground on which ratification may be made to depend, upon the ground of justice to the womanhood of America." He addressed the constitutional question, presenting the opinion of the Tennessee attorney general that voting for ratification would not be in violation of the state constitution. But it was his closing words that said it all.

"I submit this issue to you as perhaps the most far-reaching and momentous one on which any body of men has been called to pass since the establishment of our government."

The Suffs were elated.

The joint resolution would now need to be introduced into both chambers, but due to clerical error, it could not be introduced into the House. The actual resolution document itself had not been attached to the governor's message. A missing piece of paper would delay the proceedings by a full day—such a stupid waste of time when time was so much of the essence. The special session could not exceed twenty days. Now, if women were sitting in all of those seats, they'd have the sense to send someone to fetch it and get on with the job at hand.

Now, this—Gray felt—was why women were needed in politics. Not for the silly assertion that some made that women's involvement would remove the tarnish and dirt in politics, but because of all this nonsensical wasting of time. Women didn't have the luxury of wasting time. The job of governing needed doing, not all this endless rigmarole. Mama had been a whiz at organization. Papa had always said so.

Apart from the reading of a letter from the Maryland legislature, ratification was not even mentioned.

Gray exhaled and gritted her teeth. Maryland had voted against ratification. They could have nothing to say she'd care to hear.

The letter was a request that the Volunteer State follow Maryland's lead in rejecting the amendment, that they not force the federal amendment on their kindred southern states. Gray could hear Suffs mentally groaning while, in the tower, she stalked back and forth like a caged lioness, mumbling under her breath.

The day's sessions in both chambers ended with absolutely nothing having been accomplished.

One day gone, and only nineteen left.

Afterward, Suffs, Antis, and legislators filtered out of the Capitol, many heading back to the Hermitage. Carlisle and Gray waited until the crowd had cleared and slipped out themselves at the back of the pack.

Inevitably, they drew uneasy side glances from those nearest to them as questions were urgently whispered back and forth. Gray slipped her arm through Carlisle's and leaned against him as they walked. Whispers and rumors would accompany them wherever they went. Human were put off by them. They set off a survival instinct humans didn't know they had. But they were beautiful—and in their particular case, wealthy—and humans were as naturally attracted to them as they were subconsciously alarmed by them. They had to have answers ready to provide.

Their cover story was that they were brother and sister, but more had been needed to explain why they were so rarely seen. The best way to create a good cover story, Carlisle had taught her, was to give as little information as possible up front and build upon it as circumstances dictated. Carlisle had confided to the concierge one afternoon that he wasn't sure he should have brought her here, but she'd wanted to come so badly, he hadn't been able to refuse. Pernicious anemia, he'd whispered. Nothing could be done. Her doctor had objected to the trip, but staying at home wouldn't save her, and if he could give her this much, he couldn't refuse. It had been told to the concierge in confidence and with a large tip, and it had been all through the hotel by the following evening. The tragic story of the dying beauty and her handsome, devoted brother. Gray leaned more heavily against Carlisle's arm, as the story was whispered around them.

"I'll lie down as soon as we return," she said loudly enough to be overheard by those closest to them. By the time they returned to the hotel, a few were swearing to have seen them in the gallery, and God bless her, wasn't she brave?

XIX

In her suite, Mrs, Catt met with a long stream of both suffrage and political leaders. She was not happy with the day's developments—indeed, there wasn't much to be happy about. On top of the frustration from the days' sessions, the Antis had sent a delegation of women to Ohio to meet with presidential candidate James Cox in his home—their goal, to persuade him to stand against ratification, or at the very least to stay neutral, to not encourage the legislature to ratify. For women so vehemently opposed to women becoming involved in politics, they involved themselves in politics up to their beady little eyeballs.

Gray had no great estimation of Cox's strength of conviction in support of the Anthony amendment. To have come so far, to have come so close . . . to have it fall apart now, at the eleventh hour . . . How would they ever recover? Gray dropped her head into her hands. How would they stand up and start all over again?

The meetings in Mrs. Catt's room continued through the evening. The Tennessee Suffs were with her when her telephone rang. The irate caller had news that truly capped the day, moving it from merely bad to disastrous.

Seth Walker, the darling of the Tennessee Suffs, the man who'd shocked everyone with his seemingly spiritual conversion to suddenly support suffrage the previous year, had defected. He now opposed ratification. He'd announced his "change of conviction" to Governor Robert's men on Sunday morning, and it had been kept quiet until the turncoat himself revealed the truth to the Suffs who'd gone to discuss the latest poll numbers with him.

Carlisle took her hands in his and held them tight. _Every great cause has faced traitors._

She swallowed mouthfuls of venom, shaking with anger. The no good, deceitful, slimy little, two-faced. . . .

Governor Roberts had known since Sunday morning and hushed it up. If Roberts had known, then James Cox must know as well. Could there be any wonder at the Antis sending a contingency to meet with him? How they must be laughing! Gray imagined a circle of cackling harpies.

The Tennessee Suffs with Mrs. Catt were shell-shocked, but when the initial surprise wore off, fury replaced it. Mrs. Catt was disgusted, but she was too experienced to be surprised. Having seen this kind of thing too many times before, she pulled herself up by her boot straps and carried on, barely skipping a beat.

"We have long since recovered from our previous faith in the action of men based upon a love of justice," she told those gathered with her. "That is an animal that does not exist."

That the Suffs did not sleep well that night could hardly be surprising. Not only their anxiety kept them awake, but to add insult to injury, drunken legislators from the eight floor stumbled through the halls until the early hours.

XIX

The Women's Party Suffs had taken the news of Seth Walker's betrayal particularly hard—he had pledged his support personally to Sue White. Within hours of his defection becoming known, five representatives who'd previously pledged their support, like young Harry Burn, had followed him. She had trusted these men. She felt like a fool.

Walker hadn't done his worst yet, though. He went on to further announce that he would lead the opposition to the amendment on the House floor, and he would use his power as Speaker to sink the resolution in a hostile committee.

Seth Walker was the talk of the town, and the Antis were now the ones calling him their hero. The newspapers were running the stunning story for all it was worth. A Senator from Maryland who'd come to Nashville to support the opposition was exuberantly telling reporters, "If we hold Tennessee, the Amendment will never be ratified. The sentiment is turning against it." The Anthony amendment was as dead as its namesake, Antis laughed.

XIX

By the time the sun had risen, Carlisle and Gray had slipped back into the tower of the Capitol building to await the day's proceedings. Governor Robert's men hadn't sat idly by after Seth Walker's betrayal. Walker would not introduce or sponsor the ratification resolution, but by the end of the day, with the help of Tennessee's junior U.S. senator Kenneth McKellar, they'd recruited the six representatives from Shelby County to take his place. And to add to that, the morning papers had delivered some additional much needed good news, and the Suffs had had the pleasure of seeing the Antis knocked down a notch. James Cox had made a statement—given after his meeting with their delegation and with full knowledge of Seth Walker's defection—that he stood behind his promise to work for ratification of the Anthony amendment.

Now, everyone just had to hope that the Shelby County representatives and James Cox were men of their word, unlike Speaker Walker.

At ten o'clock, both Speakers took up their positions in their respective chambers, struck their gavels, and the sessions were opened. The Suffs gathered in the galleries sat holding their breath while up in the tower, Gray stood motionless, her body as stiff as a board, all waiting to see whether a group of six men would keep their promise to introduce a resolution to grant the right to vote to millions of women.

In the Senate, Speaker Andrew Todd stood and introduced Senate Joint Resolution #1 as in the lower chamber, the six representatives from Shelby County stood as one unified group and did the same, Seth Walker looking down from his elevated chair, the American flag behind him, and a sculpted bronze eagle above his head.

Gray wished it would fall on him.

Now came more waiting. Under the rules of the legislature, once having been formally introduced, the joint resolution would "lay over" in each chamber for one day before being referred to the appropriate committee for consideration and recommendation.

Two days down with precious little accomplished, only eighteen left.

Again the Hermitage became the center of activity, most parties retreating there after adjournment to resume the battle. The hotel was the site of so much of the action, it was being called the third legislative chamber.

Both sides of such an emotionally charged fight gathered together in one place on a swelteringly hot August afternoon, and it was inevitable that sparks would fly. A member of the Women's Party, a former actress named Betty Gram, spotted Seth Walker across the lobby. Publicly, she demanded to know if it was true that he was breaking his word and would now oppose ratification. She'd drawn the attention of everyone within earshot, and all who'd heard her stared openly.

Walker was gobsmacked, but soon recovered.

"I'd let the old Capitol crumble and fall from the hill before I'd vote for ratification," he retorted brazenly. "I'm going to do all I can to influence friends to vote No."

Gram persisted.

"What has brought about the change against the suffrage amendment in the House—the governor or the Louisville and Nashville railroad?" she demanded to know. "What kind of crook are you anyway—a Roberts crook or an L&N crook?"

Bystanders were shocked.

"How dare you charge me with such a thing! That is an insult!"

Betty Gram simpered and smiled.

"Why, I am just asking you for information."

Flustered and furious, Walker stormed off.

Against the wall in a far corner, Gray and Carlisle stood much as everyone else, in a combination of shock and awe. Gray twisted her fingers together, careful to not shred another pair of gloves—she only had two left. She could see two outcomes. No doubt Gram's moment of revenge had been delicious, but Walker would not take a public insult lying down. There was going to be hell to pay for what she had done. On the other hand, the Women's Party's no holds barred tactics were effective precisely because they were public and insulting. Just the threat of a public shaming could serve to keep men pledged to support ratification from following Walker's example. Betty Gram was no novice. She was young and beautiful, and she had been jailed for the Cause five times, hunger struck twice, and been force fed. With her jail door pin proudly pinned to her blouse, Betty Gram was not one to cross.

Reporters cornered Mrs. Catt for a statement. NAWSA's measured, persistent resolve was diametrically opposed to the Women's Party's militantly aggressive ways. Her uncharacteristically emotional tirade from Chattanooga was a thing of the past. True to form, Mrs. Catt stuck to the script.

"When I came to Tennessee three weeks ago, I announced that a majority of both the Senate and House were pledged to vote for ratification. No development has overturned that majority. I have absolute confidence in the integrity of the legislators of Tennessee and believe that they will stand by their pledges."

It was the perfect response, Gray felt. Mrs. Catt's calm words were just as great a public challenge as Betty Gram's heated ones. In their own different ways, both women had issued a public challenge to the honor and integrity of the legislators.

It was a good thing too, since many of those pledges would blow away with the slightest breeze without a little something to anchor them. The threat of retribution could be motivating. They didn't say that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" for nothing.

XIX

At the same time Betty Gram had been confronting Seth Walker at the Hermitage, another Suff had been confronting a leading Anti, Nina Pinckard, president of the Southern Women's Rejection League, back in the Capitol building, accusing her of being in the pay of the liquor interests. The evening paper carried Mrs, Pinckard's account and in large, boldfaced print her warning that any further false allegations made by Suffs would be "prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

"Such false and malicious charges are an example of what woman suffrage means in action . . . cruel, unfair, dishonest, and unscrupulous attempts to blast the reputation of every courageous woman who dares to disagree with the politically ambitious fraction who demand 'votes for women' and 'offices for women.'" The Antis adamantly denied any of their number had received "one cent from any liquor or brewery interest. This charge ALWAYS CIRUCLATED whenever the suffragists feel themselves BEATEN IN A FAIR FIGHT, is founded only on the malice or ignorance of little minds which assume the public can be fooled by repeated falsehoods."

In their suite, Gray railed against the hypocrisy of women who circulated posters depicting suffragists as monstrous, almost gargoyle-like creatures, and accused them of neglecting and abandoning their children.

"Cruel, unfair, dishonest, unscrupulous . . . !" she repeated. "They are describing themselves!"

_I think we should go out tonight_, Carlisle told her.

"I don't need to hunt."

"We needn't hunt. Just get away for a few hours. Go for a run." _You're not even two-years-old yet, but here you are, surrounded by thousands of humans and your control is perfect. You're doing wonderfully well, but it would do you good to have a break from having to keep such tight control of yourself every minute._

Gray clenched her teeth and nodded sharply. A few hours away, the chance to really run—the chance to break things—sounded like just the ticket.

* * *

Author's notes:

Jasper is still with Maria. He wouldn't leave her for another 20 years.

"She wrote of the strong sense of justice of Southern men, of their honor and chivalry. . ." Lady Nancy Astor's letter to the Tennessee legislature. I didn't quote the letter directly. I paraphrased and condensed it, but that's the gist of what she wrote.

Aunt Susan's girls, or Aunt Susan's nieces – 'Aunt Susan' was Susan B. Anthony, the 'nieces' were young suffragettes she mentored and nurtured.

The Anthony amendment was as dead as it's namesake, Antis laughed—This lovely line is actually paraphrased from a quote from _The Clarion-Ledger_, a Mississippi newspaper after the Senate there voted ratification down.

"...the vile old thing (the Susan B. Anthony Amendment) is as dead as its author, the old advocate of social equality and intermarriage of the races, and Mississippi will never be annoyed with it again."

* * *

Three chapters to go. Like this chapter, the remaining chapters will all post on the 99th anniversary of the most important moments—the next one in four days, Tuesday, August 13th. For a teaser for chapter four, leave me a review, but in the meantime, here's a teaser of the teaser. A teaser teaser.

". . . women sitting beside senators, as if they had any right to be there. . . ."


	4. Chapter 4

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement is intended. All publicly recognizable fictional characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. All historical figures are represented as accurately as possible.

* * *

Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done.

Susan B. Anthony

* * *

XIX

Cities smelled awful, but a dozen miles into the forest, the air was fresh and clean. Carlisle had been right. Keeping such rigid control of herself for so long was exhausting. She breathed deep. Dropping the act was as refreshing as the clean air. It made her wonder, though—if in less than three weeks she already needed a break, how could she hope to keep up the act nonstop, like she'd have to if they settled somewhere?

"What are you thinking about?" Carlisle asked her.

"Wisconsin."

_Oh?_

"What if I'm not ready? If I can't keep up the act for three measly weeks without needing a break—"

"Stuff and nonsense. Here the need to keep up the facade is nonstop. There is no respite. In Wisconsin, or settled anywhere, we'd have a home of our own, a refuge far from human eyes and ears where there would be no need to pretend." _And there are exceptional circumstances here. Life in a small town in Wisconsin will be a somewhat duller affair than a major city on the break of making history._ "If you can manage yourself here as well as you have, I'm sure you'll manage there, or anywhere else, perfectly well."

Gray couldn't help but smile. His confidence in her was as absolute as her parents' had been. She wouldn't let him down for anything.

"So, then," she said. "Wisconsin it is. I am curious, though. Why there?"

"Just a feeling. It's a beautiful region, and northern states receive less sun. There are plenty of hunting opportunities in the area and a number of small towns where I could practice and you can do whatever you decide you want to do."

That was a question. What did she want to do? Before, she'd planned to go on to college. Would that be an option still? Even in Chicago, a girl enrolling in college was a rare thing. Could she bear to enroll in high school again, if not? They could always buy college books for her. She could study whatever she chose on her own, and she'd have Carlisle to help her. And she could always hide somewhere, just as the did in the Capitol, and listen in to whatever lecture interested her. And—

"I'd like to study music." Mama had always been after her to practice, but she'd never had the patience. "Do you think we could arrange to get a piano?"

Carlisle dipped his head.

"I'm sure that can be managed." _It'll be lovely to have a song bird around. _

Gray saw the plan in his head. Her mother had had a beautiful piano, a wedding gift from her father. Arrangements could be made through an auction house for an offer to be made to her mother's brother to purchase it. He'd already proven amenable to selling her mother's jewelry to he had no idea whom. Gray barely remembered the man. He hadn't approved of his sister's outspokenness any more than their mother had. He hadn't been a frequent guest of theirs, nor they of his.

"Do you think he'd even still have it?" she asked.

_If not, we simply find out who does. _

Okay, then. They had a plan. It felt good . . . better than she'd expected. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed not having a set plan, a direction, drifting as they had been. She felt grounded already.

"Okay, then. Wisconsin it is."

XIX

Wednesday morning brought all parties back to the Capitol building, including Carlisle and Gray, concealed again in the tower.

Having now lain over overnight, the resolution was able to move to the next step, being moved to the appropriate committee for consideration.

In the Senate, Speaker Todd moved that the resolution be referred to the Senate Committee on Constitutional Amendments—and its ratification friendly members.

The Antis wasted no time in making their first move as Hershel Candler moved that the proper committee was the Judiciary Committee—and it's anti-ratification members.

A pro-suffrage senator immediately fought back, arguing that it was for the Speaker to send resolutions to the committee he deemed appropriate. It had always been that way, and Senator Candler had offered no justification for doing otherwise.

Of course he hadn't, Gray fumed. He could hardly stand up and declare his sole purpose was to bury the resolution alive.

The hand played out remarkably quickly. The motion to table was made and voted on, and it carried. Just. The Suffs had won the first round, but it had been close, and it would not be the last. Still, Gray felt some of the tension in her shoulders ease. A victory was a victory, regardless of how slim. The resolution would go to the Committee on Constitutional Amendments.

In the House, under the leadership of Seth Walker, another battle in the war was being waged. William Bond—a friend of Walker's—had immediately launched into an impassioned history lesson, forcefully reminding his colleagues of why the Tennessee Constitution had been rewritten to include the provision it now did. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment—giving the freed slaves all the rights and protections of citizenship—had been forced on Tennessee "against the opinion and sentiment of an overwhelming majority of the people." As a result, Tennesseans rewrote their state constitution to require that legislators faced their constituents in an election before any federal constitutional amendment could be considered; thereby giving Tennesseans the chance to send legislators to Nashville who shared their postition.

When it came to the U. S. Supreme Court's ruling and the Tennessee Attorney General's opinion, he offered a way out. They needed to ascertain the feelings of Tennesseans on the amendment, but an election wasn't the only way to accomplish that. He proposed that public gatherings be held across the state to debate the issue and suggested, Saturday, August 21, as the date for the gatherings—time enough to organize, he said. Each county would then report to the district's representatives within three days, after which, the legislators could properly represent the will of their constituents.

He was perfectly right, or course. They didn't need to wait for the election. The delay of nearly two full weeks would kill the amendment just as effectively. It was a genius move, really. The twenty day time limit of the special session would run out before a vote could be held and the true purpose of the delay could be masked as concern for the public interest.

The chamber erupted even as Bond was speaking—shouts, cheer, protests—both on the floor and in the galleries, each side trying to drown out the other. The Antis cheered the motion as a means of disguising their true aim. The Suffs were rightly alarmed. The proposed resolution gave a very pretty cover to any legislator looking to shirk his responsibility while appearing dedicated to representing the will of his constituency.

According to the House rules, the resolution should be held over to the next day for a second reading, but Speaker Walker promptly ruled to allow his ally's delay resolution to be immediately put before the House.

Voices rose over each other, and faces reddened as an angry debate broke out.

"The members of this legislature must determine whether they are men or weaklings!" shouted Leonidas Miller of Chattanooga, a staunch supporter of suffrage.

"Nothing could be fairer . . . than this resolution," Bond responded.

"This measure is not meant as an obstruction, but to sound out popular sentiment," added a Bond ally.

"Make no mistake," Miller demanded, "the authors of this resolution to defer are, in their hearts, bitterly opposed to suffrage ratification, and the purpose of it is not to secure the will of the people, but to delay action and defeat the ratification of suffrage in Tennessee."

"Are you afraid to let the people express themselves?" Bond retorted. "Do you believe they will go against you, and that you will not be able to put over a measure they do not want?"

Miller asked how much expressing they needed. Both party's state conventions and the national convention had declared for ratification. "And far above the political party appeals, comes the voice of the womanhood of America calling for justice long overdue. Will you yield to the appeal of womanhood, or the insidious influence at work to defeat the measure? To throw this question back upon the people will show cowardice!"

As Miller argued valiantly, Anne Dudley, a beautiful Tennessee socialite, circulated among the legislators as a reminder to all of the pledges they'd made to support the amendment. Mrs. Dudley was the living refutation of one of the Anti's favorite lines of attack against suffragists, casting them as masculine abominations. When the Antis spread propaganda casting suffragists as unfeminine or as abandoning their children and husbands, it was photographs of Anne Dudley reading to her children the Suffs released in response. And it was Anne Dudley who had demolished the favorite anti-suffrage argument that because only men were required to bear arms in defense of their country, only men should vote. Her response: "Yes, but women bear armies."

Speaker Walker addressed the chamber like a preacher would his congregation. "This resolution carries out the spirit of the law as enacted by our forefathers . . ." He proclaimed that their forefathers had acted fifty years ago with "letters that stand immortal" to protect Tennesseans of today, to give them a voice in stopping another amendment they opposed from being rammed down their throats. Bond's motion was the fair solution to the unfair situation imposed on them by the Supreme Court's ruling. "We want to get an expression from the people, for that is the spirit of the constitution of 1870."

Up in the tower, Gray wrung her hands. Her gloves had long since ended up in pieces on the floor. The proposal was brilliant in its stealth. It hid both malice and cowardice equally well behind an attractive veneer of an honorable motivation.

Passionate arguments both in favor of the meetings and against suffrage were made and rebutted with equal vigor.

Thomas Riddick, on only his third day in the legislature led the charge, slashing away at the resolution. It was ridiculous, a sham, he said. It was nothing more than a disgraceful shirking of responsibility. He questioned the logistical feasibility of the proposed public gatherings and further insisted they could not possibly garner an accurate sense of public feeling. Who would measure that sentiment, and how? First come? The loudest? The whole idea practically begged for manipulation if not outright fraud—and he suggested that been its true intent.

A buzz spread through the chamber as Governor Robers himself appeared in the back of the room. He was following up the strong words of his message to the legislature with action. He communicated with his team and spoke quietly to a few lawmakers before patting them on the back. He was working to get the amendment ratified, and he was doing it in the most visible way possible. Deeds, no longer just words. And not just the governor, leaders from both parties were in constant motion throughout the chamber.

The fight carried on until a motion was made to table the delay resolution.

Gray held her breath. This was it, the first real, meaningful test of who really had the support of the majority in the chamber. Much more so than the Senate's vote had been—the motion here was far more subtle and offered a legislator much better cover to hide behind. If the tabling motion failed, it could be a death blow. After weeks of pledging support to either side, the clerk called roll, and one by one, for better or worse, the members of the House cast their votes.

It was a strange experience, to hear hundreds of mental voices keeping count in near perfect unison. It was almost dizzying, identical thoughts coming at her in different voices and from multiple directions.

Men who'd pledged their support for suffrage now voted with the Antis in favor of the delay, and with every one Gray felt a cold shiver shake her. She followed Anita Pollitzer's thoughts, and she felt her anguish every time one of her East Tennessee delegates like young Harry Burn voted in favor of delay. But there were also men who'd been counted as opposed to ratification who now voted with the Suffs. It seemed men would be just as likely to pledge to either side just to be rid of someone. Gray wanted to rub the Antis faces in it.

One by one, the clerk made his way through the names, until finally the Speaker cast the last vote—No.

The Suffs erupted in cheers. The delay resolution was voted down.

In the tower, Gray pressed her hand to her chest, and she breathed out, releasing all the tension as joy replaced it. The first battles had been fought, and it had been won by the Suffs.

"The fight is won!" Governor Roberts declared. "Victory for suffrage is certain."

Behind the Speaker's desk, Seth Walker pounded his gavel and adjourned for lunch.

Gray hoped he choked on his.

XIX

The afternoon session saw another line of attack from the Antis, abandoning any attempt at disguise and openly calling for a delay until 1921. That time, the speaker did not make an acceptation to the rules, and the resolution was carried over until the next day. The Antis needed the night to work on the legislators.

It then came to refer the joint resolution to committee for consideration. Seth Walker could not delay here, but as the Suffs themselves had argued in the Senate, it was in his power to send it to the committee of his choice. He could bury it, and he had previously gloatingly announced his intention to do just that, sending it to the House Judiciary Committee—chaired by none other than his friend William Bond of the delay motion—but after the events of the morning, he changed his plan. He took an entirely different and far more stealthy path and referred it to the House Committee on Constitutional Affairs, just had been done in the Senate. He then named Thomas Riddick, a constitutional law expert who had both been outspoken against the delay motion and been instrumental in gathering together the Shelby County representatives to introduce the ratification resolution, to serve as committee chairman. Gray saw in the speaker's mind the underhanded cunning of a move that had eyebrows rising all around the chamber. For all of Riddick's apparent strengths, he had his weaknesses, too. He had been sworn in to the House only three days prior, and he was the kind of man who put noses out of joint. He could rip an opponent to shreds, but he ruffled feathers. A committee chairman was a powerful position, and Walker knew as well as anyone the size and fragility of a politician's ego. For the power of not just any committee chairmanship, but the chairmanship of the committee considering a history making resolution, to be given to a legislator on just his third day in the House would ruffle every feather in the room, including the suffrage supporters. He would let his opponents' egos damn the resolution for him, while publicly painting himself as a fair man.

That afternoon after both chambers had been adjourned for the day, both armies re-stationed their troops. Those who took up position back at the Hermitage held behind-closed-doors private meetings where carrots were dangled and sticks were threatened and preparations were made for a public debate to be held the following evening. After loosing both tests of strength that day, the Antis were on the defensive. They were spitting nails over the governor's efforts in getting the amendment passed, and in retaliation they circulated rumors about putting forward an independent candidate in November. Other soldiers spread out in the field, keeping track of delegates and affirming their support—delegates who were sick to death of being hounded by both sides and many of whom were finding refuge on the eighth floor in the Jack Daniels suite. Whiskey could even been smelled on the breath of a continual stream of legislators and politicians who met with Mrs. Catt in her suite.

"Are none sober?" Gray heard her ask.

A voice answered, "Possibly."

Gray knew very well who was picking up the tab of the Jack Daniel's suite, and why. She even heard disapproval in the minds of several of the staunch prohibitionist Antis, but it was a very tolerant sort of disapproval if it helped their cause. In politics, needs must.

Suddenly, Gray gasped as without warning, things took a sudden and dramatic turn.

In a fraction of a second, Carlisle was at her side. She pressed a hand to her mouth, then to her chest.

Wide eyed, she stared at him.

"Goodness, they've called for a vote on ratification. It's to be on Friday."

Both Speaker Todd in the Senate and Tom Riddick in the House felt buoyed by the day's results, and they'd announced they had the votes and were ready to move.

"That's a good thing, surely?" Carlisle said.

Even before the session had been begun, Mrs. Catt had been quoted in the papers as saying they had the numbers and were ready for a vote. Gray twisted her fingers together. She wasn't so sure. If—_if—_the votes truly were there, then yes, of course. But were they?

Todd and Riddick were overconfident, she feared. She listened, searching for the key player's thoughts. The Suffs were divided. Yes, they'd been victorious today, but a vote against delay was no guarantee of a vote for the amendment. It could just as easily be the exact opposite. As Sue White was warning, "The opposition has yielded by barely a hair's breadth and suffrage is not yet out of a hazardous position." She still felt the sting of the betrayal of men who'd pledged their support to her. Further efforts were needed, she admonished.

But there was precious little time left to make those efforts.

The unexpected urgency had the Antis scrambling as well. Already sore after their defeats that day, they 'd begun scheming what their next move would be. Now, they were like a wounded animal backed into a corner. Lashing out, they planned to play on every negative emotion mankind possessed—fear, anger, bigotry, jealousy, resentment. They had pockets full of mud, and they were ready to sling all of it.

XIX

The night ran late, and the morning started early. If anyone had gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep, Gray would be surprised.

Internal fights broke out within the Suffs and Antis alike as to who would represent them that night. Each side would be allowed five speakers. Afraid of shocking the delicate sensibilities of certain legislators, the leaders on both sides had originally planned to have only men present their case. Women speaking on the House floor, addressing men, was more than some law makers would be able to bear, they feared. On both sides, the women had promptly ripped that plan apart. Tempers and nerves were rapidly fraying. There would be fireworks that night at the public hearing, to say nothing of tomorrow's vote.

If they took place.

For all the infighting over that night's public hearing and the truly manic race to secure votes for tomorrow, there was still yesterday's second delay motion in the House to be survived first. Otherwise, all the preparing for that night and all the scurrying before tomorrow would all come to naught. If that motion carried, there would be no debate that night or vote tomorrow. There would be no amendment.

At ten o'clock that morning, in front of a chamber packed to the gills, Seth Walker rapped his gavel and brought the House to order. Hidden in the tower for the fourth day in a row, Gray twisted her bare fingers together—she had no more gloves; she'd shredded every pair. Everything hung on the line, but in the end, the second delay resolution came to nothing. Those legislators who supported ratification immediately moved to table it, and the resolution was voted down.

Disaster had been averted for the third time. Not a bad start to the coming day and a half.

XIX

The Antis knew just how to tap into people's anger and confusion, and they threw everything they had into it. As the Suffs prepared for that evening, the Antis went for blood. From right there in the Hermitage, they released their hateful propaganda designed to play into mankind's worst instincts. Stoking resentment, they recalled the Reconstruction period after the Civil War, promising Tennesseans that passage of the nineteenth amendment would lead to the federal government interfering in Tennessee's elections and federal enforcement of the fifteenth—giving black men the right to vote.

They promised the deterioration of the family, showing a hen wearing a "Votes for Women" sash, walking away from her nest and eggs, telling her mate, the rooster, he could sit on them himself. A caption beneath the image read, "The More a Politician Allows Himself to be Henpecked, the More Henpecking We Will Have in Politics. A Vote for Federal Suffrage is a Vote for Organized Female Nagging Forever."

They targeted people's anger and anxiety like an expert. Had a man returned from fighting in Europe only to come home and find his job taken by a black man or an immigrant? By a woman? By a machine? They sympathized and claimed to understand him. Had his wife gone to work during the war? Only now the war was over, and she didn't care to come back to her rightful place in the home. Now, she wanted everything men had. Now, she wanted to vote. What would be next? His place as a man, his very world as he knew it, was under threat.

XIX

By eight o'clock that night, a storm was brewing, but it was brewing inside. The Capitol was packed to capacity, and beyond. The chamber was crammed full, and hundreds more spilled out and into the halls. In the balcony, Suffs and Antis donned their respective yellow and red. On the floor were both sides' teams, legislators, and other elected officials. In the tower, Gray and Carlisle wore their yellow rosebuds and waited, as below the air crackled with electricity and lightening threatened.

Each of the different bands of Suffs had wanted one of their own down on the floor, arguing for their cause. In the end, it was Charl Ormond Williams, the school superintendent in Shelby County and one of the first two women named as a vice chairman in a major national party who was agreed upon, and she opened the debate. With her West Tennessee accent, she recounted the struggle women have endured for three generations to achieve suffrage. She chose her words for her audience on the floor, not the audience in the balcony. She used a calculated _"soft-suasion" _that grated on the members of the Women's Party, setting their teeth on edge.

"We have asked the men of Tennessee to take the matter of ratification and solve it for us," she said. "We feel perfectly safe to place it in the hands of our own men."

The image of women sitting back and trusting their menfolk to do right by them out of some alleged sense of noble chivalry was an anathema to Anita Pollitzer and Betty Gram—and to Gray, as well—but it wasn't them Charl Williams was trying to persuade. The men she was addressing saw themselves as those noble, chivalrous creatures always looking out for their womenfolk, and they lapped it up.

After her polite introduction, though, the real debate began, and the gloves came off.

Tennessee's junior U. S. senator Kenneth McKellar spoke first for the Suffs. He forcefully reminded the legislators that ratification of the Susan B. Anthony Amendment was part of both party's platforms, and he drove home their obligation to their party. For the Antis, Tennessee congressman Finis Garrett brought up the constitutional question, promising a disputed election in November if the amendment was "illegally" ratified. It was Charlotte Rowe, though, a leading Anti strategist from New York, who brought both sides in the galleries to their feet.

"Under the pretense of political expediency and the fond dream of women's emancipation from the laws of nature, suffrage leaders are working to destroy the states and enslave the American people. The Federal suffrage amendment is a deliberate conspiracy to crush the will of the American public. If the present legislature ratifies, it will be due to the Bolshevik and socialist influences at work on them." She lashed out at Mrs. Catt and the Tennessee Suffs, and warned the legislators to "keep the counsels of honor and not the counsel of these women of Tennessee." She continued her tirade, delighting in the boisterous applause of the Antis. She ranted on, delivering equally exaggerated condemnation and praise. "Tennessee has the opportunity to immortalize itself as the savior of the republic and redeem the principle of true representation and our union of states, without which American democracy must perish from the earth." She said nothing of any substance and offered no logical reasoning or rational, but she spoke loudly and emphatically. Like the Anti's propaganda, her aim was to play on emotions, not intellect. Unfortunately, it was a tactic that was more often than not successful.

Luckily, though, it was also a tactic that shriveled up and faded away when confronted with a both intellectual and emotional response. Former Tennessee Attorney General Charles Cates delivered that response swiftly and effectively.

"When the men of Tennessee want to take lessons in honor, they will take them from the women of Tennessee." The Suffs jumped to their feet and cheered their approval. "Let me say further to these distinguished ladies from outside the state who come here to preach against the women of Tennessee receiving the ballot—you can come here and preach to us for a thousand years before you could make us believe the women of Tennessee had lost their grip on womanhood! The men of Tennessee trust their honor to their women, and they should not hesitate to trust them with the ballot."

The Suffs erupted into applause that sent vibrations all the way to the tower. Gray joined in that applause, bouncing on her feet. Her own father could not have spoken more eloquently than Charles Cates had. She had heard her father's voice in the other man's words. Oh, how she wished he and her mother could be there, and Trudy and Sibby. She clasped her hands together and pressed them to her lips. How she missed them all. What were Trudy and Sibby doing at that moment? Were they thinking about her, wishing she were with them as she was wishing they were with her? Gray pressed her lips together into a thin line, her jaw trembling. Did they miss her as much as she missed them? They had each other, and their parents and families, and their whole lives ahead of them. What did she have?

Carlisle touched her shoulder, and her breath caught.

She had him. And she had Wisconsin, whatever she chose to do once they got there. She had a life in front of her too, whatever it held. It wasn't the life she'd expected, but it was a life, and that was better than the alternative. It was up to her to make something of it.

"I'm okay," she said, looking down at her hands. Her fingers were twisted together. How all of her old governesses had despaired over the habit . . . Her knuckles had been rapped by more than one ruler. Her grandmother had severely disapproved, but then, grandmother had severely disapproved of most things she did.

Grandmother. Gray felt a crushing wave of regret. After Carlisle had found a safe place for her to endure the change, he'd left her there to cover their tracks. Part of that had been calling on her grandmother personally to tell her that both Gray and her father had succumbed. It was the least he could do for her, he'd felt, but it had been one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. He'd given countless humans the dreaded news that a loved one had died. It was always hard, but it had never been as hard as that, because never before had it been a lie. Gray had rarely seen her grandmother without a stern expression on her face, but that day, hearing Carlisle's words, her face had fallen into undeniable, abject grief. She'd loved them desperately, her daughter and granddaughter, but Gray had never known. She doubted her mother had, either. Gray had misjudged her, but it was too late now. Grandmother had lived less than a year after—

_What are you thinking about?_ Carlisle asked.

"Before."

Just as the world had carried on around her for the last two years, the debate had carried on below. After Charl Williams and Charlotte Rowe had spoken, the evening had been strictly male. The men had magnanimously granted the women their token appearances, but now they took charge. Man after man speaking for and against women's suffrage, men deciding what rights women were entitled to and under what circumstances they would deign to grant them those rights. From Warren Harding's letter to an Anti judge from Nashville, which was read to the assembly, ardently agreeing that it would be "very unfair to you and should very much misrepresent my own convictions, if I urged you to vote for ratification when you hold to a very conscientious belief that there is a constitutional inhibition which prevents your doing so until after an election has been held." To Edward Stahlman from the _Nashville Banner_—the same man who had approached Mrs. Catt after her speech to the Kiwanis Club only weeks ago and pledged his support for ratification—who wore a smile as he spoke on behalf of the Antis. "If you listen to these lawyers you will still be in doubt when they get through. It is easy for them to construe the oath which you took as members of the legislature. They didn't take that oath, you took it." This was a man who was a charter member of the Men's Ratification League speaking. He was the last man alive who had any right to speak of oaths, Gray felt, not when his own promise, his own word, meant nothing. "I am in favor of giving the women the ballot," he alleged, while qualifying that favor in his next breath, "but I am not in favor of giving them this power through any doubtful action by the Tennessee legislature."

The debate continued until nearly midnight, and after it concluded, the members of both chambers' constitutional committees immediately began their deliberations. In the Senate committee, things went as smoothly as could be hoped. In spite of the words of Senator Harding and Edward Stahlman supporting the repeatedly debunked constitutional question, pro-ratification committee members stayed strong, and in short order, the committee chairman announced that the committee would returned a favorable report. The Senate would vote on the amendment on Friday as planned.

In the House committee, Seth Walker did everything he could to put his thumb on the scale. The Speaker of the House was an ex officio member of every House committee, and as such, Walker included himself in the committee's deliberations—another layer of his plan to derail the amendment. The inexperienced Tom Riddick was no match for the Speaker of the House.

The committee had the ability to stall the resolution for seven days. It was Walker's intent to force that delay, and calling in favors and using the power of his position as Speaker, he did just that. His interference and Riddick's inability to counter it infuriated the pro-ratification members of the committee, and after the conference concluded in the early morning hours, they privately embarked on a strategy meeting of their own.

XIX

The day of the Senate vote on the Susan B. Anthony amendment every newspaper across the country published the text of Warren Harding's letter to Judge Tillman. Gray was now ardently looking forward to Wisconsin. In Wisconsin—as in Illinois—women had already won partial suffrage and could vote for president. She would enjoy voting against Warren Harding immensely. The Suffs were justifiably livid. Leaders like Mrs. Catt were being bombarded with questions from the press, but neither offered a statement. In a rare moment of agreement, both the NAWSA and the Women's Party were desperate to not fan the flames. Please, God, let the story burn itself out, they prayed.

On top of that, it was Friday the 13th. They had both reality and superstition stacked against them.

Tom Riddick was as strong a supporter of women's suffrage as could be hoped for, but with less than a week's experience in the legislature, he was completely out-gunned in a fight against the Speaker of the House—which of course had been Walker's plan all along. Riddick's inexperience was putting ratification in jeopardy, and by early Friday morning, pro-ratification committee members had had enough. They'd staged a coup and demanded a new floor leader for ratification. By breakfast, they had him. Their chosen man, Joe Hanover, was everything Tom Riddick was not. He was equally as devoted to suffrage, but he had all the necessary requirements that Riddick lacked. He had the experience and the know-how—and he was liked.

That morning, the Suffrage leaders in Nashville—Mrs. Catt for NAWSA and Sue White for the Women's Party—felt the weight of countless women's sacrifices over decades on their shoulders. Mrs. Catt's call to keep anyone not of Tennessee birth in the background had been a good one. Members of the legislature were sick and tired of outsiders. Sue White was a Tennessean. Alice Paul was not. As desperate as she was for Miss Paul to come and take charge, she'd secretly admitted to herself that it was best that she was not there. The scene between Betty Gram and Seth Walker had not been forgotten, and as a result, the Women's Party bore the lion's share of the legislature's resentment. Summoning the courage that had earned her her jail door pin, she pinned a nosegay of purple, white, and gold asters to her blouse right along side the treasured pin, and stood to face the day. From the tower, Gray was in awe of the bravery and strength of the woman as she and masses of other Suffs strode forcefully into the gallery.

On the floor, in a powerful visual statement, pro-ratification senators had invited prominent Tennessee Suffs to sit beside them at their desks. Gray's throat felt tight, and her chest burned with emotion. The Antis were outraged, of course—women sitting beside senators, as if they had any right to be there. This proved what they'd been saying all along, they whispered fiercely to each other. First the vote, then what? What would be next? These Suffs wouldn't be happy until there were women representatives and women senators in Washington from every state and in every state capitol. Hadn't they already proved that to be their end goal when that vile Rankin woman of theirs from Montana had gotten into the U. S. House of Representatives four years ago? Where would they stop? A woman president? they scoffed.

All Gray could see was that very future, a future where one day a little girl might say she wanted to be president and be told that she'd have to work very hard as opposed to being laughed at and mocked. Carlisle stood beside her. It was thanks to him that she was there to witness that future be born, and she took his hand and squeezed it.

"Thank you," she said.

_For what?_

"For this amazing opportunity."

XIX

Speaker Todd called the Senate to order with a rap of his gavel, and the Constitutional Amendments Committee promptly delivered the promised favorable report. The report was more than just favorable, it seemed to have been purposely have been written in a way to put an end to the constitutional question once and for all. It read:

This committee "is of the opinion that the present Legislature has both a legal and moral right to ratify the proposed resolution." The legal arguments for this determination were given in detail and described ratification as "certain as the recurrence of the seasons." It declared, "National women's suffrage by Federal amendment is at hand. It may be delayed, but it cannot be defeated, and we covet for Tennessee the signal honor of being the thirty-sixth and last state necessary to consummate this great reform." In conclusion, the committee had written, "Fully persuaded of its justice and confident of its passage, we earnestly recommend the adoption of the resolution."

The Suffs in the gallery let out a round of applause that had to be audible blocks away at the Hermitage. Two dissenting committee members wrote a report of their own as well, stating the exact opposite, but it was for show only. It was voted on and tabled, and the majority report was accepted.

The big moment then arrived, and Gray pressed her hands flat together and pressed her forehead against her fingertips as the ratification amendment was put before the full Senate to be voted on.

The Antis had no intention of lying down. A senator Gray had noticed more than once as a pompous nuisance of a man with an exaggerated opinion of his wit stood and called out, "Point of order!" In a handwritten note he delivered to the clerk, he argued the Senate didn't have the power to take up ratification. It was a tired argument that had been made and settled more than enough times, and Speaker Todd swiftly overruled the charge. His ruling was appealed and was upheld by a large majority.

A second attack was launched by a more formidable foe, Herschel Candler. Senator Candler was a man who moved other men. He was intelligent, well-spoken, and respected. His would not be the feeble attack of a blow-hard old bore.

"I know the pressure that has been exerted here, and I am humiliated to confess that" my fellow party members are so "for revenue only." Members of his own party set their jaws and glared at him. "I know of men who a week ago were against this thing that are for it today, and I know why: Many of them now have their names on the state payroll."

On the floor, the glares already aimed at Senator Candler hardened, but in the tower, Gray took heart, rapidly searching through unknown minds, trying to find thoughts that confirmed Candler's charge that men who'd opposed ratification a week ago now supported it.

"I am here representing the mothers who are at home rocking the cradle, and not representing the low-necked and high-skirt variety, who know not what it is to go down in the shade of the valley and bring forth children."

Gray saw Senator Candler in the minds of all those gathered in the chamber. As he spoke, he jabbed his finger in the air, pointing toward a group of Suffs. She heard them hissing and jeering, and she saw images of their children in the minds of several Suffs. "I have six children," one of them shouted in response.

He wasn't nearly finished, vowing that ratification of the Anthony amendment would be the dawning of "petticoat politics." He charged, "If there is anything I despise, it is a man who is under petticoat government!"

More of the men in the chamber glared at him through narrowed eyes.

"You are being dictated to by an old woman down here at the Hermitage Hotel whose name is Catt. I think her husband's name is Tom. Mrs. Catt is nothing more than an anarchist." Candler was shouting now to make himself heard over the Suffs' outcry against him. "Have you heard the speech of hers before an audience in New York, when she said that she would be glad to see the day when black men could marry white women and it is none of society's concern? This is the kind of woman that is trying to dictate to us! They would drag the womanhood of Tennessee down to the level of the black women."

The growling had spread to Candler's fellow senators on the floor, but he wasn't finished yet.

"Within a very few years after this amendment has passed, you will find that Congress has legislated so as to compel we people of the south to give to black men and women their full rights at the ballot box. Then you will find many of your counties, now dominated by white people, sending up black representatives to this House."

In the tower Gray was shocked into silence, but those in the chamber were not. There was a deafening uproar following Senator Candler's emotional tirade. He'd outraged Suffs and offended his fellow senators. Even the Antis were displeased—not because they disagreed with a word he'd said, but because they feared his fanatical outburst might cost them the support of legislators he'd angered.

Speaker Todd responded to Senator Candlers ranting and raving. He addressed the chamber frankly and sternly, restoring calm and order and firmly rebuking the senator.

"That is the most unfortunate speech that has ever been made upon the floor of the Senate. These slurs do not meet approval of the good women of Tennessee. I am convinced that there yet remains enough virtue among the womanhood of Tennessee and enough courage among the manhood of the state to see that no condition such as the Senator from McMinn has pictured would ever occur." He denounced Candler's threat of black legislators, vowing that members of both parties "alike would take their muskets and go to the polls to prevent it."

Gray recoiled, and Carlisle pressed a hand low on her back.

"There are no sinister influences here," Speaker Todd proclaimed. "Talk about petticoat government. If there is a man in this House or in the gallery who has not been under petticoat government ever since he was born, I want him to stand up. I am ready to go into petticoat government. I have always been under that kind, and I thank God for it!"

The Suffs in the gallery cheered wildly.

The boisterous ovation for Speaker Todd silenced, and in hundreds of minds, Gray could see Governor Roberts entering the chamber and making his way toward the Speaker's desk to sit beside Senator Todd. On the floor, one of his men made a tour of the room, making sure men who'd pledged their support remembered the fact. Representing the other party, Tennessee's junior congressman Will Taylor took a seat beside a senator known to oppose ratification and remained there. The message was as clear as it was united—_We're watching_.

Politics, as Gray was learning, was a repeating cycle of long periods of men speaking interrupted by occasional brief moments of them actually doing something. For the next three hours, men spoke. The entire time, there was not one single new argument made. They rationalized, and they justified, and they repeated what had already been said. One common thread was the expression of disgust for Senator Candler's tirade. One of his fellow senators mocked him, retorting, "We have been accused of having a petticoat government, but the Senator is mistaken there. He's behind the times, because they don't wear 'em anymore!" The great leader of men, the former army colonel was condemned and ridiculed across the board.

It was afternoon before the resolution was put to a vote. For all the endless speeches leading up to it, the vote, now that it was finally happening proceeded quickly. Name after name was called. Man after man voted. There wasn't a person present who wasn't keeping a running count of votes. Excitement built in the Suffs as the number of 'aye' votes climbed faster than anyone had expected. Seventeen votes in favor of ratification were needed. Still in the Hs, they already had fourteen. The Antis grumbled and kicked up a fuss as men who'd pledged to oppose the amendment now voted to ratify it. Senator Long was number fifteen. The pompous blow hard of the point of order challenge abstained, as did two others, and one senator walked out when his name was called rather than vote.

Senator McMahan was number sixteen. The Suffs held their breath. Gray pressed her clasped hands against her lips.

Senator Matthews' name was called, and he responded, "Aye." The Suffs in the gallery exploded with jubilation.

Gray pressed her hands to her face as Carlisle embraced her. The clerk continued to call role, and men continued to vote but no one could hear them. Speaker Todd banged his gavel multiple times, but the cheers and applause continued.

They'd won the Senate, and by a bigger margin than in their wildest dreams. Twenty-five senators had voted aye to only four nay.

The celebration continued until Speaker Todd was forced to call on the sergeant at arms to restore order. As the senators left the chamber, a line of jubilant suffragettes greeted them, coyly lifting their skirts, showing just a bit of the ruffle of their petticoat, proving they did still wear them.

Gray gasped. She froze, unable to release the breath.

_Phillip—_

XIX

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End notes:

Elected to a two-year term in the U. S. House of Representatives in 1916, Jeanette Rankin from Montana became the first woman elected to the United States Congress. She was elected to a second term more than two decades later, in 1940. At that time, she was one of seven women serving in the House. A pacifist, she was the only member of Congress to vote against U. S. involvement in both World Wars, and to this day (August 13, 2019) she remains the only woman elected to Congress from Montana.

"Under the pretense of political expediency and the fond dream of women's emancipation from the laws of nature, suffrage leaders are working to destroy the states and enslave the American people. The Federal suffrage amendment is a deliberate conspiracy to crush the will of the American public. If the present legislature ratifies, it will be due to the Bolshevik and socialist influences at work on them."

_emancipation from the laws of nature_, remember, this was a woman speaking.

A "point of order" is a charge used when a member of an organization believes one of the organization's rules is being violated. It is then the responsibility of the one in charge to make a determination, called a ruling, on the charge. The ruling can be appealed, and the appeal is voted on.

Chapter 5 will post on August 18th. Leave a review and get a teaser!


	5. Chapter 5

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement is intended. All publicly recognizable fictional characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. All historical figures are represented as accurately as possible.

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Thank you to Raum and o2shea for all their help and support, and thank you to Sarah Dooley for my beautiful Facebook banner.

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If we learn from the experience, there is no failure, only delayed victory.

Carrie Chapman Catt

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XIX

"_Get your hands off of me!"_

"_Oh, come on." _Laughter, and the smell of alcohol. _"You know you don't really mean that."_ A hand had moved from her arm and grabbed the side of her skirt, hiking it up._ "Don't go acting all innocent on me, like some kind of tease. Everyone knows how all you suffrage girls are—"_

Her hand had stung. She remembered that now, the sting in her palm. She remembered the shock and the fear, the utter disbelief. She'd screamed, and she'd slapped him across the face with as much strength as she could muster. It hadn't been nearly enough. Angered, Phillip had shoved her against the wall more roughly after that. She'd cracked the back of her head.

But then he'd been gone. Carlisle had come. He'd heard her scream, and he'd come to her rescue. The rage on his face . . . It had been like nothing she had ever seen before.

She'd never seen Phillip again.

Gray rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Carlisle was a gentle man. A moral, deeply principled man. What had she driven him to do? He valued human life. In his two and a half centuries, hers had been the first human blood he'd ever tasted. If because of her, he'd—

Gray was in one of the bedrooms in their suite. Guilt racked her. She couldn't face him. The whole awful episode had been her fault from the beginning. If because of her, he had—

She bowed her head. Carlisle had yanked Phillip away from her and dragged him away, and she had never seen him again. She'd never wanted to, and she'd been exceedingly grateful not to. Now, though, she wished more than anything that's she'd caught just a glimpse of him, or even heard his name mentioned. Anything to tell her that he'd still been alive. If Carlisle had killed him, she'd never forgive herself.

He was worried about her. He was in the living room, reading a novel and trying to hide his concern behind the book's plot. He thought yesterday's victory in the senate had brought back the loss of her parents, and always compassionate, he was giving her room to grieve.

She stood and moved to the window. It had been a hot and humid day, and the sky looked ready to open up. The street outside was teaming with people, scurrying to get where they were going before the rain came. Gray watched as they went about their business. There were more motor cars than she remembered their being in Chicago. How many would there be in another five years? Or ten? Or a hundred. A hundred years from then. The year 2020. She'd be there to see it. What would the world be like in the twenty first century? She couldn't imagine it. An indefinite number of years lying ahead of her . . . It suddenly felt daunting.

In the living room, Carlisle closed his book.

_Fancy a bit of a break? We could get out and stretch our legs. _

XIX

The rain started shortly after they'd slipped out of the city. They sat high in a tulip poplar, and Gray turned her face to the sky, letting the rainfall wash over her. She could follow each individual drop as it fell.

It was nice, sitting there in the rain. The world felt so incredibly peaceful. It wasn't, of course, but it was nice to pretend for a little while. Carlisle had spent scores of nights like this, but he'd spent them all alone. He was grateful for her company. They didn't speak at all. He didn't prod her with questions or offer assurances that 'everything would be alright,' like almost any other man would. He left her to herself, to talk to him or not, as she chose. She was more grateful than she could say.

"It's not what you're thinking," she said.

He turned to her.

"I miss them, of course, but . . . Yesterday, something happened, and I . . . That is, it reminded me . . ." She pulled her lips between her teeth, and her shoulders drooped. She was so ashamed. If Carlisle knew the truth, would he ever look at her the same way again? How could he? He would blame her, and she would deserve it. It had been her own doing, her own fault. "I remembered something."

_And it's upset you._

A minute passed before she nodded.

"I'm afraid that because of something I foolishly did, you may have . . . I hope that because of me, you . . . that you aren't . . . that you didn't. . . ." Gray covered her face. She could hear Phillip's voice. _Tease_. She could smell the alcohol on his breath. She could remember the disbelief as he'd grabbed her by the arms and pushed her up against the wall. How fast that disbelief had turned to fear when he'd grabbed her dress and yanked it up. She shuddered and covered her mouth. She'd trusted him.

_Dearest? _

Gray choked on her breath. Carlisle had never called her that before.

In an instant he was at her side. _Whatever is the matter? _He laid his hand on her shoulder, and she recoiled away from him.

In slow motion, he lowered his hand to his side. In his mind, she saw her memory from his perspective. Hers was foggy, spotty. His was in perfect detail. He cursed himself for the slip. He'd tried so hard to never think about that night. She nodded.

"I had hoped you would forget."

"I had, until yesterday. In the tower."

He blamed himself, thinking when he'd embraced her after the vote, he'd reminded her of him.

"Nothing a man like you could ever do could ever remind anyone of a man like him."

He was sorry that that memory had surfaced, but he was relieved that whatever had jogged it, it hadn't been him, either by action or thought.

"It was something some of the Suffs did after adjournment."

Something she had once done.

Some man, she couldn't remember who, or maybe she'd never known.

_The__se bluestockings, you never see the pretty young things putting them on. It always seems to be the fat and ugly old spinsters, long after any hope of a man taking an interest in their legs has gone._

Miss Leonard, the headmistress from school, Gray remembered her warnings that her temper would get her in trouble one day.

"I hope that you weren't driven to do something you regret because of me," Gray said.

He understood what she meant, and rather than tell her, he let her see. He'd dragged Phillip away by the collar—Phillip had half a foot on Carlisle and had a much more muscled build. It made Gray smile to see the much smaller man dragging the larger. Phillip had been bent double and barely able to stay on his feet with the speed Carlisle moved at. Carlisle had thrown him against a wall. Ribs had cracked on impact, and the memory of the sound gave her a sense of satisfaction. Carlisle had put the fear of God into him, but that fear and a few cracked ribs were all he left him with.

More relieved than she could express, Gray thanked God, and equally anxious to not discuss it further, she changed the subject.

"Have you noticed how many more automobiles there seems to be than there were two years ago?"

"There are," Carlisle said, acquiescing readily. "And I don't believe we've seen anything yet. I expect, before long, more people will be driving around in motor cars than not."

"Do you really?"

"In time, I don't expect you'll be able to find a horse on the roads anywhere. Everyone will be behind the wheel."

"Surely not."

"The cost of a Model T is less than half of what it was ten years ago, and it will go down further. Henry Ford's assembly line revolutionized production. They finish two cars off of their assembly line every minute."

"Do they?" Gray was a well-born young lady, and if there was anything every well-born young lady knew how to do, it was how to turn a conversation to a safe topic. She'd brought up automobiles to do just that, but now she found herself genuinely interested. Certainly, for all her father's liberality of mind, he'd never discussed car manufacturing with her, or Gray doubted, any woman.

"The war led to improvements in design and construction. Motor cars are easier to drive. Parts are standardized now, simplifying maintenance and repairs. I'd say it's inevitable, and of course, it's much better for us."

"For us? What do you mean?"

"Partly because if you or I were to attempt to hitch a horse to a carriage, the poor animal would go mad—I had the devil of a time appearing to come and go the same as anyone else before the automobile—but also because at the start of the war I invested rather substantially in a number of auto manufacturers. The vast majority of them will go under, but the one or two that may succeed could produce a very significant profit."

Gray's eyes widened, and she blinked in surprise.

"It takes a good deal of money to ensure our safety," he said.

Carlisle had never discussed matters with her before. No one had ever discussed matters with her before.

"When we settle in a place, there are papers that are needed. The world is changing. It's becoming ever more traceable. Human beings leave paper trails, far more than they used to do."

She hadn't thought of any of that. It just showed how naive she was.

"How do we get those papers?"

"There are ways. Lawyers, men of business, officials. Not the most reputable of their profession, but useful for our needs. It's not terribly difficult to locate men willing to secure or produce what we need for the right price."

"For the right price," Gray repeated. "And that price, I presume, is quite high."

"Exorbitantly. It's crucial that everything be indistinguishable from the genuine article. For that, the price is steep."

"I see, and you invest in automobiles, and I presume other things as well?"

"We have investments in power companies, telephone companies, railways, among others. Just lately, I've been considering aircraft manufacturers."

"Airplanes?" Gray asked in surprise. She hadn't seen that in his mind at all, but she strove to not invade his privacy.

"Regular airmail service between Washington, Philadelphia, and New York was established two years ago. Airplanes won't be going away, you can be sure of that."

Airplanes. It seemed like something out of a novel by H. G. Wells. But, then, she was now a vampire, and if ever a reality had seemed like fiction. . . .

"If we are going to settle in Wisconsin for a while, we will need to organize our affairs."

Always _we_, and _our. _Never, _"You just sit tight, and I'll see to things for you."_

"I know business matters are not generally considered women's affairs—"

"I want to know."

"Good, because your ability will come in useful."

Gray nodded. Yes it would. The thought pleased her. She wouldn't be merely ornamental. She would be an active, useful participant in making their plans. Sitting on a bough, Gray pulled her legs up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her knees, smiling.

XIX

Carlisle and Gray had returned to Nashville a short while before dawn and gone straight to the tower of the Capitol building. The first afternoon they could safely move about in public, they would begin the hunt for men who, for the right price, would secure for them the documents they would need to begin their new lives in Wisconsin. Carlisle had left it to her to chose a surname for them, and she knew just the one.

While they'd been away for the weekend, the Suffs had been hard at work. Mrs. Catt had been alarmed by Senator Candler's comments. Not his insults—she couldn't have cared less what Hershel Candler thought of her—but she feared the damage his allegations of support for marriage between the races could cause. She had never said any such thing, and she moved quickly to refute it, releasing an emphatic statement, which had been run in papers all over the country. Interracial marriage was illegal in thirty out of the forty-eight states, and even where it wasn't illegal, public sentiment was so vehemently against it that it made no difference that there was no law on the books. After her unequivocal denial, Senator Candler had been pressed for exactly where and when Mrs. Catt had made the statements he'd attributed to her. He'd been forced to admit he'd taken a statement of Mrs Catt's in a published interview that "suffrage knows no bias of race, color, or sex" and drawn his own conclusions. Attempt to rationalize or justify as he may, the simple truth was he'd made it up because it suited him and because he'd expected to get away with it.

Gray hadn't forgotten everything from her human life—and if she had, she'd heard such hateful, repugnant thoughts in people's thoughts as to remind her—but to hear them so brazenly—proudly—proclaimed on the senate floor . . . Senator Candler's words had been repellent, but Speaker Todd's . . . Threatening _muskets_ . . . ? From them such sentiments had been bad enough, but Mrs. Catt was someone Gray admired greatly. "A crime against nature," she'd called interracial marriage in her published denial. Gray had expected bigotry and racism, but she'd underestimated just how vehement it would be. She couldn't help but think—what about her own family? Now, one human smelled much as any other to her. Regardless of the color of their skin, their blood was warm and red. But that was now. What about before? What had her parents thought? What had she herself thought?

_You look troubled._

"I'm fine," she lied.

XIX

The Antis had been hard at work all weekend as well. "This happened in other southern states," Charlotte Rowe had told the press. "It will be remembered that in both Mississippi and Delaware the senate ratified, but defeated the amendment in the house by two to one. Those states were working under the same 'party pressure' as Tennessee is now."

She was right in that, Gray knew. 'Party pressure,' and other pressure as well.

Everyone was feeling the strain. Tempers were hot, and suspicion was ripe. Allegations were coming from both sides. Mrs. Catt believed her phone calls were being listened to, and several Suffs had complained of men lurking outside their doors, attempting to eavesdrop on their conversations. Harriet Upton reported her telegrams were being intercepted by Antis. For their part the Antis were threatening legal action for any perceived insult or slander and accusing the Suffs of buying whole bundles of anti-suffrage newspapers straight from the delivery truck and destroying them to prevent distribution.

The Antis had the financial backing of powerful industries out to protect their own interest and no qualms of using it. Joe Hanover, the new floor leader for ratification in the house, had been reporting men were being bribed to oppose ratification, or to simply not vote at all. He was well liked and respected in the house. He'd done favors, and was owed favors in return. One senior member of the house came to his room after an all-nighter in the Jack Daniels suite on the eight floor to report he'd been paid two hundred dollars by the Antis to vote their way. According to Representative Hanover's account, he'd told his colleague he'd sold out too cheap.

"I hear they're paying the others five hundred."

"Well, them crooked sons of bitches!" the other man had cried out. "I'm gonna vote for you, Joe."

Cash wasn't the only bribe reportedly being offered by the Antis. Jobs and positions were also dangled, and there were offers involving the company of a young woman for an evening that two years ago would've shocked Gray beyond words. If none of that worked, the Antis took a different approach. Edward Stahlman, editor of the _Nashville Banner_, went after legislators pledged for ratification. Legislators had it pointed out to them just how much they stood to lose if they continued to support ratification—the mortgages on their homes might be foreclosed on or their businesses loans called in—Gray was dispirited to hear that polls of the house taken during the weekend had shown their efforts were yielding results. Support for ratification was slipping. Men who'd supported the amendment were bailing. At the beginning of the special session, the Suffs had no less than sixty-two signed pledges. As of that morning, the Women's Party counted no more than forty-three committed pledges, and possibly as few as forty, with another dozen wavering.

"Enough votes are pledged to adopt the resolution in the house, but the members do not look you in the eye when they say they will vote for it," it was reported. "A sort of reversal of enthusiasm has been spreading over the members like wet blankets. The house would like to postpone action another week or another month or another hundred years. . . ."

Gray pressed a hand flat against her stomach. She couldn't bear the idea of once again seeing one chamber voting for ratification only to have the other chamber strike it down. They'd come so far and were so close. If the amendment failed in Tennessee, the blow would be fatal. The house postponing another month might as well be a hundred years.

The Women's Party wasn't taking any of it lying down. Sue White possessed written pledges in support of the amendment, and she threatened to publish those of any representative trying to weasel his way out. Their hypocrisy would be in black and white for all to see, and Gray cheered her on. The Antis cried blackmail, but public exposure was no more than they deserved, Gray felt.

Monday's session was not set to begin until two o'clock, and as that hour approached, some legislators who couldn't be bought off or threatened began receiving urgent telegrams. There'd been a terrible accident, or a sudden illness, or some other emergency required their immediate return home—any story that could be dreamed up to get them out of Nashville and prevent their voting—but in spite of the Antis' best efforts, when roll was taken, ninety-five out of ninety-nine delegates were present. However, as it was, the Constitutional Amendment Committee hadn't returned its recommendation, or even met to debate it. The session was adjourned until the following morning. Another day with nothing accomplished, and another evening bleeding delegates.

With every defection, the Antis grew ever more overjoyed. They also brought in more clout to the Constitutional League team to continue to push the constitutional question, and they enlisted Governor Roberts' defeated primary opponent Jesse Littleton to work as a lobbyist. Littleton had sworn most faithfully to support women's suffrage to Anita Pollitzer from the Women's Party. He'd struck her at the time as an oily sort of man, and her impression had been proven to be correct.

The House Committee on Constitutional Amendments met at eight o'clock Monday evening in the hotel room of it's chairman Tom Riddick. Eighteen men representing both parties—including Joe Hanover, who'd replaced Riddick as the floor leader for ratification—made up the committee. Just before the meeting was set to begin—Hanover noted two committeemen pledged to support ratification were missing. The two were rounded up by Suffs and delivered to the meeting.

The meeting wasn't much of a meeting. There was neither a debate nor even any meaningful discussion. A vote was called, and it frustrated Joe Hanover to see that a fellow committeeman, Banks Turner, a close ally of Governor Roberts, voted with the Antis. The initial result was a tie, but then another of the delegates who'd voted with the Antis changed his vote. Joe Hanover suspected he was following orders—the strength of the Anti's position proven, the Speaker would want a full house vote held as soon as possible.

Speaker Walker wasted no time. Upon leaving the meeting, he immediately stated to the waiting reporters, "We've got 'em whipped to a frazzle. We have ratification beaten, that's all there is to it."

It seemed as if the bad news would have no end. On Tuesday morning, the Suffs were greeted by even more disastrous headlines from presidential candidate, Governor Warren Harding. Speaking to reporters, Harding voiced his opinion that should Tennessee ratify, November's election could be thrown into question by the inevitable legal action that would result from the ongoing constitutional question. Adding insult to injury, the Antis had placed a paid advertisement in the _Tennessean—_a pro suffrage newspaper.

AN APPEAL TO THE CITIZENS OF NASHVILLE

Will you, by your presence in the Capitol this morning, help to DEFEAT the Susan B. Anthony Amendment? This is the most important issue that has confronted the South since the Civil War.

We appeal to you in the name of Tennessee, in the name of the South to help us maintain a righteous cause.

Wear a red or pink rose. Show your loyalty to the people of your own land.

In the name of millions of Southern women we appeal to the unquestioned chivalry of the South.

Josephine Pearson was elated. This was the day she'd worked so long for—the day she would see the question of women's suffrage finally put to rest. As brave Confederate soldiers had once fought to drive Union forces from the statehouse and free Nashville from occupation, so she and her fellow Antis were ready to fight in the Capitol for the glory and future of Tennessee. Glowing, she pinned three red roses to her blouse—showing her presidential status—and made her way to Capitol Hill.

She was greeted there by yards upon yards of yellow. Yellow bunting and banners, swaths of yellow fabric hung from the columns of the Capitol's portico. Golden banners from Tennessee's suffrage organizations and the Women's Party's purple, white, and gold hung from the Corinthian columns in the house chamber. Someone had gone so far as to fix a big yellow sunflower to the bronze eagle above the Speaker's chair.

Josephine Pearson seethed, but it was no matter. It was her day. She would see who was seething at the end of it.

More people than ever had crammed themselves into the house chamber. On the floor, nearly one hundred members were seated at their desks, while easily two and a half times that many made their way around, lobbying the members in last minute attempts to sway anyone still open to influence. In the galleries, both sides wrestled for spots. The hallways were four rows deep with those who couldn't force their way in.

At ten thirty, Speaker Walker called the chamber to order. Ninety five legislators were present.

Immediately, the Antis moved that the floor be cleared of all lobbyists and spectators. The Speaker had the right to allow or prohibit guests on the floor as he chose. It was a seldom used house rule that, the Speaker in their pocket, the Antis took advantage of. Pro-ratification members objected loudly, but there was nothing they could do. It was in the Speaker's power, and the Speaker was in the power of the Antis. Joe Hanover argued, "There is no reason to ask America to leave the chamber!" He moved to suspend the rule. His motion was voted on and defeated, fifty-one voting to suspend the rule to forty-five to uphold it—a majority in his favor, but not enough. A two-thirds majority was needed to suspend a house rule. The spectators were removed from the floor. They resisted vocally. They did not go easily. But they did go.

The first attack in the final battle had been launched and won by the Antis.

Tom Riddick had lost his position as floor leader for ratification, but he remained the chairman of the Constitutional Amendments Committee, and he submitted the majority report. He was a freshman legislator, but he was an experienced attorney, and he put every bit of his skill at courtroom drama into it. Opposition to women's suffrage he claimed to be "a relic of barbarism." He questioned, "If women are human beings, why shouldn't the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence apply alike to them?" He countered the racial and constitutional questions with a direct threat. "I have here the signed pledges of sixty-two members of this House to ratify the 19th amendment, right here in black and white, which the people of Tennessee will have the opportunity to read." Gray picked more than one or two anxious threads of thought. "You speak of your conscience? What about your conscientious objections to violating your pledge?" Suffs cheered wildly. Riddick didn't shout. His voice lowered, and he spoke slowly. It was a tactic designed to force his audience to listen to him, and it was a tactic that worked for him. "If those men fail to keep faith, and this resolution is defeated, I shall go from this chamber a dishonored man. Ashamed of being a Tennessean."

For the next three and a half hours, the legislators rehashed every argument made for and against women's suffrage both over the past month and over the past seventy years.

"Women are the best thing God ever made, and I honor women above all humankind. But I would not pollute them by allowing them to wade through the filthy waters of politics." He had a wife, nine daughters, and eight daughters-in-law, and they were all in agreement that their fathers and husbands represented their interests perfectly well. "And I guess what's good enough for them will have to be good enough for the rest."

The Suffs booed loudly.

"If his wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law put their faith in him," Gray said to Carlisle, "then they misplace it." The delegate speaking had pledged to support ratification until "the cows come home."

Gray listened to Carrie Catt's thoughts, back in her suite at the Hermitage. The Capitol building, framed by her open window, dominating her view and her thoughts. Occasional bursts of noise carried to her—but which side was making that noise, and where they cheers or jeers? She'd devoted her life to the cause of full suffrage for all American women, since she'd been thirteen, laughed at and mocked by her father and brothers for asking why their mother wasn't getting ready to go and vote with the others. Only men could vote, didn't she know that? Voting was too important to leave to women. Her mother had been as smart as her father; she'd known as much, if not more, about the candidates. Carrie herself was every bit as smart as her brother. Her father's farmhands couldn't even read, but they could vote simply because they were men. Her father's words that day had felt like a backhand across the face, but the worst part was that her mother had laughed along with the men. Gray could see how that memory had haunted her for nearly half a century.

Many times Mrs. Catt had talked of the moment the fight for women's full suffrage across the nation was won, saying the bell of liberty would ring out. The Tennessee Suffs had installed a replica of the Liberty Bell, crack and all, in the house chamber that morning, ready to be rung the moment the battle was won. Mrs. Catt couldn't help but wonder whether America were ready to hear that bell ring.

The debate in the house raged on, hour after hour.

A pro-ratification legislator spoke rather ridiculously.

"As a Southern man, I could not refuse to allow women to shed their refulgent rays across the path of politics in the South. Woman is God's chosen creature, and won't she, if taken into our political life, scatter her purity an fragrance into the muddled waters of our political life and make it as clear as crystal?"

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Gray rolled her eyes. "'Shed their refulgent rays and scatter her purity and fragrance,' I ask you!" She and Carlisle looked at each other and laughed.

A delegate pledged to ratify blathered on about sleepless nights spent anguishing over what might come of universal suffrage for women. They could have violence in the streets if black men and women were allowed to vote, he predicted. "I reached the decision that I would never put this thing upon my people." He could not "force woman suffrage upon the states which don't want it."

For and against, it went on and on.

"Taxation without representation should no longer apply to the women of the United States."

"This issue has nothing to do with woman's suffrage. It is a matter of the constitution and violation of our oaths."

"I would be ashamed to admit that my wife, my mother, or my sisters were not as capable of exercising the ballot as I am."

"This so-called elevation of woman in politics means instead her degradation."

"The working women of this country should have the same right accorded to" black chauffeurs or porters.

"Tennessee must place the capstone on the temple of justice by becoming th 36th state."

The morning passed into the afternoon, and on it went. There was no break for lunch. Representatives were hungry and began to grow restless and irritable. The Suffs were prepared. Wanting to prevent the delegates from adjourning without voting—and risk loosing more votes—they'd brought sandwiches and ice tea to keep the legislators in their seats. But under direct orders from the Speaker that there was to be no one unauthorized on the floor, the sergeant at arms refused to allow them onto the floor, even just to pass the food out. The legislators grew hungrier and more irritable.

Another telegram arrived for another pro-ratification delegate delivering news that he was urgently needed at home. His wife was dangerously ill, it claimed. The man, Charles Wesley Brooks, jumped out of his seat. Panicked, he whispered to Joe Hanover that he had to leave. Brooks was white-faced, but Hanover was doubtful. There had already been so many telegrams of phony emergencies. This one, though, was genuine. Brooks lived a long distance from Nashville. He had to leave, he insisted. Joe Hanover pleaded with him to stay, even as Brooks was scanning the train schedule.

After over two hours of arguments, Speaker Walker rose from his chair to address the chamber, and the Antis broke into wild applause. The Suffs sneered and glared at him.

"I thank God I can stand here unfettered and unhampered by political influences or by political aspirations." Gray clenched her teeth. "I resent the statements made by Mr. Riddick," he said, his voice rising. "I am a southerner from the bottom of my foot to the crown of my head!" The Antis' cheers grew. "I resent charges that I've been influenced by a certain railroad, or that railroad has tried to change the opinion of some members of this body."

He waved around a copy of the General Assembly's oath of office. "We are asked by some to disregard this oath. I don't believe the men of Tennessee will do it. The man who asks you to sacrifice your conviction is not worthy to be called a Tennessean."

He asked his colleagues if Tennessee would force suffrage on her sister southern states who had already rejected it.

He had Warren Harding's letter, and he read it aloud as well. As Gray listened, she pictured herself casting a vote for James Cox, Harding's opponent, in November.

He also had a telegram he'd received from President Woodrow Wilson urging ratification. As he read it out, the Suffs began to cheer. Anne Dudley stood at the back of the room, behind a railing where spectators were still allowed to stand. She climbed on top of a bench and began to chant.

"Wilson! Wilson! Wilson!"

President Wilson was a southerner and remained very popular in his party. The Suffs in the gallery joined in. For several minutes, they cheered, whistled, clapped their hands, and stomped their feet until Walker's speech could not be heard over them.

He paused until he could be heard again, and read out his response to the President, earning on ovation from the Antis as strong as the Suffs' had been.

He railed against Tom Riddick's threat to make public the pledges of men who voted against ratification.

"I have right now in my pocket the written pledges of more than a majority of the members of this hour that they will vote to defeat this amendment." Gray gasped right along with the spectators in the gallery. "But before I would show that paper to a living soul, and thus keep any one of these men from voting according to his own conscience, or even threaten to publish the list in an effort to coerce them into voting as they may feel they should not, I would suffer this right arm to be cut off."

The Antis again rose to their feet, cheering.

"Men of Tennessee, be men today!" he charged. "I don't want Democrats or Republicans. I call upon you as men! In good faith and good morals, we cannot ratify!"

Walker's speech had lasted nearly an hour, and the Antis were in raptures.

The pressure was now on Joe Hanover to respond for the ratificationists, and he felt that pressure. He also felt the growing impatience of the hungry, hot, and tired members of the house. As he began his speech, he saw as Charlie Brooks checked his watch anxiously.

"Ours is the great Volunteer State, and women from the East, West, North, and South are looking to us to give them political freedom. The entire world has cast its eyes on Tennessee. This is a moral question, and that's why I'm here, voting for this amendment."

He took on every one of the Speaker's assertions one by one. One of the Antis' favorite arguments was the racial one—passage of the 19th amendment would lead to federal meddling in Tennessee's elections and enforcement of the 15th, giving black men the vote. To that, he reminded the chamber that white women outnumbered black men and women combined in the south.

He turned to the constitutional question.

"There has been so much said about the constitution of Tennessee and oath of office, but certain interests have sent their lobbyists to ask members of this legislature to violate their pledges! And their agents are down a the Hermitage Hotel right now!'

The Suffs booed.

As he spoke, a group of anti-ratification legislators gathered together, whispering, Seth Walker among them.

Charlie Brooks checked his watch again. His train was leaving soon. He couldn't stay for the vote.

"Tennessee never does things by halves for women," Hanover said, rushing to finish, knowing the chamber was growing ever more restless. "What we do for them as Southern men we should have the privilege of doing for other women, that ours may be truly a democracy."

Suffs still cheering and Joe Hanover still returning to his seat, the group of anti-ratification legislators who'd just been whispering together demanded to be heard.

Gray heard what they were going to say moments before the Seth Walker said it.

"I move to adjourn until tomorrow morning."

Pro-ratification delegates on the floor and Suffs at the back of the room and in the Gallery all railed against adjournment. A delay until tomorrow meant another night for the Antis to bribe and threaten away votes for ratification. If women's suffrage was to have any chance at all, they needed to vote that day.

Charlie Brooks could wait no longer. Joe Hanover begged, but Brooks had waited as long as he could. He had to leave. Joe Hanover rushed to the back of the room where spectators had been allowed to remain, and urgently, he spoke to Luke Lea, a wealthy suffrage supporter and editor of the _Tennessean _newspaper. As Hanover returned and pled with Brooks to stay long enough to vote against the adjournment motion, Lea rushed upstairs to the gallery. In moments, he and another man raced out of the statehouse.

Even with Brooks' vote against adjournment, the motion passed by a vote of 52 to 44. The house adjourned until the following morning.

The Suffs were silent. The Antis, victorious and gloating. Gray despaired, inconsolable. All seemed lost.

XIX

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Author's Notes:

A bluestocking is term (usually derogatory) for an intelligent, well-educated woman.

According to Wikipedia, there were over 200 car manufactures in 1920 in the U.S. By 1940, it was down to 17.

Birth certificates were not common in America until the middle of the century, but even in 1920, someone prominent, like a wealthy doctor, would be expected to have some kind of a paper trail. In 1903 Massachusetts and Missouri became the first states to require a driver's license to drive a car, but you didn't have to pass a test to get one. By 1930, only 24 of the 48 states required a license, and only 15 of those required you to pass a test to drive. By 1920 most states had medical licensing laws. There would be bank records and such as well.

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Here's a short teaser for the final chapter, which will post on August 26th. For the full teaser, leave me a review or check out Facebook group Twilight Fanfiction Pays it Forward a day or two before. /groups/896806390388220/

"The hour has come," Walker bellowed. "The battle has been fought, and it is won. The measure is defeated." Gray heard some of the Suffs begin to sob, and her stomach clenched as Walker moved to table the debate.


	6. Chapter 6

DISCLAIMER: No copyright infringement is intended. All publicly recognizable fictional characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. All historical figures are represented as accurately as possible.

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Thank you to Raum and o2shea for all their help and support, and thank you to Sarah Dooley for my beautiful Facebook banner.

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"The vote is the emblem of your equality, women of America, the guarantee of your liberty. That vote of yours has cost millions of dollars and the lives of thousands of women. Women have suffered agony of soul which you never can comprehend, that you and your daughters might inherit political freedom. That vote has been costly. Prize it!

The vote is a power, a weapon of offense and defense, a prayer. Use it intelligently, conscientiously, prayerfully. Progress is calling to you to make no pause. Act!"

Mrs. Carrie Chapman Catt, September, 1920

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XIX

The two men who'd rushed out of the statehouse before the vote had returned. Luke Lea and Newell Sanders, Tennessee's former U. S. senator, had chartered a train to speed Charlie Brooks home that afternoon, and if his wife was well enough, return him overnight. Senator Sanders had laid out $495 of his own money to make it happen.

In Nashville, the already manic atmosphere grew even more so. Both sides descended on the delegates from the moment they left the chamber. There was no escape. Legislators were relentlessly followed anywhere they went, both Antis and Suffs everywhere they turned. There was no respite from the barrage.

Gray stood in the middle of their suite, her folded hands pressed against her lips. The Suffs were desperate. They held Warren Harding responsible—his letter in support of the constitutional objectors, his published interview raising the question of ongoing legal battles threatening the upcoming election. Carrie Catt and Harriet Upton fired off furious telegrams, but what was a furiously worded telegram? A piece of paper that could be torn into strips or struck with a match. Gray's one solace was the knowledge that come November, she would be able to show Warren Harding what she thought of him, and she dearly hoped every woman able to vote for president did the same.

She could separate the thoughts of the Suffs more easily than the Antis, maybe because their minds were more aligned with hers. Some tried to hold on to the hope that the move to adjourn signaled the Antis were afraid of a vote—that the pledges opposing ratification Speaker Walker claimed to have from a majority of delegates was a bluff. If they had the votes, and were confident of the men voting as they'd pledged, why the delay? Call the vote and be done with it.

"It is possible," Carlisle responded when she voiced their thoughts.

She tried to search for confirmation in the minds of the Antis, but it was like trying to follow the path of specific bees in a swarm of tens of thousands. Josephine Pearson she could follow, but she didn't hear anything to give her hope. The woman was in ecstasy. Her mind was filled with recalling slights and snubs she felt she'd suffered for her staunch opposition to women's suffrage. She was feeling blissfully vindicated.

"If indeed the boast was a bluff, she needn't be aware of it," Carlisle pointed out.

That was true. If only she could find Seth Walker's mind—not that it was a place she'd care to dwell long. But even if she did locate his thoughts among all the others, and manage to follow them, just as with Miss Pearson, he could just as well be thinking about something else. It was amazing, how many stray thoughts passed through people's minds.

A man rushed into the lobby, waving a strip of newswire teletype and grabbing the attention of the entire room as he announced that there was news from North Carolina. The man, a reporter with the Associated Press, read aloud to a captive audience.

"In a surprise maneuver, the North Carolina Senate has voted to postpone consideration of the 19th amendment until the 1921 legislature. The vote was twenty-five to twenty-three to postpone."

North Carolina had never been considered in-play, but the news still rattled the pro-ratification forces. One more case of legislators shirking their responsibility, taking the easy way out. Essentially, voting to not vote. Cowards. Suffrage supporters held no illusions as to the allure of such a move to anti-ratification legislators and those on the fence alike there in Nashville. As much as it shook the Suffs, it rallied the Antis.

Gray wrapped her arms around herself as she thought about Trudy and Sibby hearing the news, as they soon would be.

All night, meetings went on at the Hermitage. Planning, counter-planning, cajoling, calling in favors, promises, out right bribes and threats. Gray had underestimated how inherently dirty politics really was. The scheming, the plotting, it both repulsed and intrigued her. It was like playing chess, but learning halfway through that all of your pieces had minds and plans of their own. Except it wasn't a game. The very status as citizens of millions of women was being decided by men, all of whom seemed to have an ulterior motive and none of whom could ever truly understand the magnitude of what they were being asked to decide.

The Suffs holding their nightly planning meeting in Mrs. Catt's suite were despondent. Their latest polls showed ratification would fall short by two votes. Their once pledged majority had evaporated in the face of the Antis bribes and threats. After the meeting, Mrs. Catt was left alone with Mrs. Abby Milton, at whose home she had convalesced after her heart scare.

"There is one more thing we can do," Mrs. Catt, a reported atheist, said to her friend. "We can pray."

XIX

Wednesday morning the Antis ran two full page ads in the suffrage leaning _Tennessean. _The first warned of race wars to come if the Anthony amendment passed. The second was a repeat of their call to Tennesseans, biding them to come to Nashville wearing red roses to show their opposition to ratification, and Tennesseans had come. They'd come from the farms and from the towns. Whole families had come, parents bringing their children to witness history be made or denied. The galleries and corridors were jammed before the sun had risen, and latecomers filled the porticoes and covered the steps and lawns. Gray peeked down from a tower window at the surreal scene below. Some had brought picnic baskets. She turned away.

Putting on brave, resilient faces, the NAWSA Suffs donned their yellow sashes. The Women's Party Suffs wore their prison pins and their purple, white, and gold. They all wore their white dresses and yellow roses. Gray wore her white dress as well. She'd embroidered thirty-five yellow roses in the lace overnight.

The most consistent train of thought she could get from the legislators was that they were fed up with the whole thing. Fed up with being hounded by both sides, fed up with being pushed by party leaders.

That, and several were frightened.

Governor Roberts was in his office, applying as much last minute pressure as he could to men who were sick of being pressured. Banks Turner sat on the other side of the governor's desk. Turner was a young farmer from West Tennessee, and up until now, he'd been a reliable ally of the governor's. Now, the governor tried to reason with him, to get him to see the big picture, the long-term, and he was getting nowhere.

The reporters crammed into the press box at the front of the chamber were overjoyed. Over the years, if women's suffrage had been reported on at all, it was covered by bored reporters wishing they'd gotten a better assignment, and their articles were relegated to the "women's pages." Now, though, their articles were front page news. Even the national papers had sent reporters, including a female journalist from the _New York Times_.

Joe Hanover circulated around the room. Charlie Brooks wouldn't make it. His wife was still in danger.

Gray listened to Anita Pollitzer and Betty Gram from the Womens' Party. Both women felt like there were more men with red roses than there had been the day before. She heard their frustration and anger as they spotted Harry Burn. He'd been pledged in support of ratification, but he now claimed to be undecided. "I cannot pledge myself," he'd claimed the last time they'd spoken to him, "But I will do nothing to hurt you." He could claim indecision all he wished. The red rose on his lapel spoke the truth for him, as had his votes cast in line with the Antis.

They confronted him.

"We really trusted you, Mr. Burn, when you said that you would not hurt us."

"I meant that," he mumbled back.

They scoffed.

Gray'd found his thoughts as the two Suffs had confronted him, and she followed them as long as she could. As he entered the chamber and took his seat, a page delivered an envelope to his desk. To his credit, he was genuinely conflicted. Personally, he himself was in favor of women's suffrage, but the people he represented, the people who'd elected him, largely were not. He wanted to keep his seat in the House. He wanted a career in politics. He worked as an agent for the local railroad at home, and the railroad was against ratification. In his position, voting against the amendment was the safest thing for him to do.

Gray could almost feel sorry for him. Almost, but not quite. Betty Gram wore the jail door pin she'd earned by being imprisoned for the Cause, and Anita Pollitzer had been arrested, but not jailed. They hadn't chosen the safest route, and she couldn't excuse his doing so.

It was as she had heard Mrs. Catt warn her beleaguered colleagues.

"No matter how well the women may work, or how effective their results may be, ratification in Tennessee will go through the work and action of men, and the great motive that will finally put it through will be political and nothing else."

Gray had never felt more dispirited.

At ten thirty, Speaker Walker called the House to order, ninety-six out of ninety-nine legislators at their desks. The senate had adjourned their own session to be present in the House, and the senators joined the lobbyists circulating among the legislators until the floor was once again cleared of all but members and reporters. The Suffs resisted again, but more forcefully. They would not be cast aside easily. The sergeant at arms called for his deputies to help expel the women. Some persisted, striding back out onto the floor and forcing the sergeant at arms and his men to remove them a second time.

When the debate finally resumed from the day before, a delegate previously pledged in support of ratification tried to justify his about face.

"I have considered it in the secrecy of my closet at home, and I am frank to say to you that I come here this morning with doubt in my heart as to whether it is best for the women of this country."

The Antis broke out in applause.

For almost an hour, it went on.

The legislators were worn out, and their attention drifted. It was stifling hot. Women in the gallery did their best to fan themselves, and men wiped perspiration from their brows. Harry Burn read the letter that had been delivered to him, then tucked it into his breast pocket. Gray heard the Speaker's thoughts enough to know he believed he had the votes to defeat the amendment.

He rose and stepped down to the floor, an Anti colleague taking over the Speaker's chair.

All attention was returned to the proceedings.

"The hour has come," Walker bellowed. "The battle has been fought, and it is won. The measure is defeated." Gray heard some of the Suffs begin to sob, and her stomach clenched as Walker moved to table the debate.

It was happening again. As it had in Delaware. As it had in North Carolina. Voting to not vote.

The House erupted—the floor, the galleries, the corridors. Anti delegates called out, seconding the motion, while pro-ratification delegates jumped out from behind their desks, demanding to be heard.

But their arguments were futile. The motion to table consideration of the Anthony amendment had been made and seconded, and it was put to a vote.

Gray closed her eyes as roll was called.

"Anderson"—no

"Bell"—no

The first two votes were against the tabling motion. Gray felt the beat of every heart in the chamber vibrate in the air around her.

"Bond"—aye

"Boyd"—aye

"Boyer"—aye

"Bratton"—aye

"Burn"—aye

The Antis were gleeful. With his vote to table the amendment, Anita Pollitzer finally struck off Harry Burn's name from her "Hopeful" list and wrote it in under the Antis, his vow to not hurt them ringing painfully in her ears.

Carlisle placed his hand on Gray's shoulder.

_Courage._

Everyone within earshot was keeping a running tally.

As the clerk moved from the S's to the T's, the Antis were ahead, before three No votes tied it—Travis, Tucker, Turner.

Gray's eyes went wide. Banks Turner had just voted against the tabling motion. Surprise rang through the chamber.

Through the alphabet and into the W's, and the last members all voted "Aye."

In the galleries, the Antis thundered their applause. By their count, the vote was forty-nine to forty-seven in favor of tabling.

The Anthony amendment was dead.

XIX

In the gallery, the Antis celebrated, but on the floor, a buzz was quickly growing. The clerk's offical tally differed. Voices shouted over other voices as members stormed the Speaker's chair. By the clerk's count, the vote was forty-eight to forty-eight. Tied. Not the amendment, but the tabling motion was dead. Delegates waved their own tally sheets like they were swatting away wasps. The Antis' wild ovation died away in stunned disbelief. Both they and the Suffs shouted at the legislators on the floor below. Hundreds of people were packed into the chamber, everyone of them on their feet and yelling that the clerk's tally was final or that it was mistaken.

It was chaos on the House floor and pandemonium in the galleries. Emotions were red hot; tempers were flared. For a moment, Gray expected a fist-fight to break out between Seth Walker and Tom Riddick until their colleagues separated them.

A second vote was called for, and it was begun.

Name after name was again called, and one by one the delegates cast their votes for a second time, the clerk repeating the name and the vote aloud so there would be no question.

Seth Walker paced the aisles. As the clerk made his was toward the Ts, Walker stalked across the floor to Banks Turner's desk. The Speaker of the House sat beside the young lawmaker, his arm around Turner's shoulder, whispering urgently to him.

"Travis"—aye

"Tucker"—no

"Turner"

The entire chamber was on the edge of their seats, holding their breath.

Gray heard his vote before anyone else, and she clasped her hands and cried out.

"Nay."

The vote ended in a forty-eight to forty-eight tie. The tabling motion went down in defeat, but there was no time for the Suffs to celebrate.

Disgusted by Turner's inexplicable vote to keep the amendment alive, Seth Walker was livid. Thunderous, he stalked across the floor. His move to kill the amendment had been defeated in a tie vote—but that tie had proved one thing. The Suffs did not have the votes to pass the amendment. If they couldn't muster a majority in a vote against tabling, they wouldn't be able to muster it for ratification either. If he couldn't kill the amendment one way, he'd kill it another. Immediately, he called for the House Joint Resolution #1 to be voted right then and there.

The already frenzied atmosphere kicked up higher.

Joe Hanover ran from one delegate to the next. Banks Turner had unexpectedly come through for suffrage on the tabling motion and given them a new lease on life, but he couldn't be counted on to come through for them again, and even if he did—as the tabling motion had served to remind—a tie equaled defeat. They needed more votes, and Hanover did everything he knew to secure them from the very few delegates who might still be persuaded.

Of course, Seth Walker and his anti-ratification colleagues were doing exactly the same thing.

The clerk prepared for another vote. In the galleries, everyone was on the edge of their seats. All of the Suffs gathered there had devoted their lives to winning full suffrage nationwide, fighting every minute for every small inch of progress, now victory or defeat was out of their hands. They were spectators. They could do nothing but watch.

The clerk began to call roll.

There were only six names before Harry Burn on the roll, and Gray struggled to single out his thoughts. The young man was sweating in his seat. He was in an awful state. He was well aware that the majority of the people he represented opposed women's suffrage on principal, but they opposed its being forced on them by a federal exponentially more. It ripped open bitter resentments from the Reconstruction period after the war and the federal amendments forced on them to be readmitted to the union. The future of not just his political career, but also his career as a lawyer would be jeopardized if he voted in favor of ratification, and he had not only himself to think about. He was the sole support for his widowed mother. He was fortunate to have Senator Herschel Candler as his mentor—and everyone knew the senator's feelings on the issue. It would be tantamount to political and professional suicide to vote in favor of ratification.

At the start of the day's session, the Antis had held a majority, albeit an exceedingly narrow one. Narrow as it may've been, it had been enough that his vote one way or the other would not have changed the outcome. He'd given his word that he would not hurt the suffrage movement, and he wouldn't have. With the majority the Antis had held, his vote would not sink suffrage for the millions of women across America any more than it could've secured it. But that was before Banks Turner had voted against the Speaker's motion to table.

All of a sudden, full suffrage for millions of women across the country rested on him. It was a lot to put on the shoulders of a twenty-four-year-old in his first term as a member of the House.

The clerk called his name.

On his lapel was the red rosebud he'd pinned on that morning, but in his breast pocket was the letter he'd received as he'd taken his seat on the House floor.

Gray gasped.

"Aye."

Softly spoken and unexpected, it took a moment for the single syllable to register in the minds of everyone in the chamber, but as it did, a low murmur of voices began to spread. As the clerk called out the next name it sank in that Harry Burn had voted in favor of ratification, and those voices began to rise. More delegates cast their votes, but the growing commotion all but drowned them out. With Burn's vote, and if Banks Turner stuck with them, the Suffs would win.

As the clerk made his way through the alphabet, an infuriated Seth Walker hovered over Banks Turner.

The clerk called the first T name.

"Tarrant"—no

"Thronesbury"—no

"Travis"—no

"Tucker"—aye

"Turner"—

No response. The clerk called his name a second time, but again there was no response.

The eyes of everyone in the chamber were locked on Banks Turner. Those in the front row of the gallery leaned forward, gripping the brass railing, but he remained silent.

Frantically, Gray attempted to find his thoughts. He was agonized. He suddenly found himself in the same position Harry Burn had minutes earlier. Burn's unexpected vote had put the question of women's suffrage squarely on him. The thirty-one year old was paralyzed under that weight.

"Mr. Turner," the clerk called a third time. People held their breath. For the third time, there was no response. Banks Turner was recorded as abstaining, and the clerk moved on.

Antis roared in victory as the Suffs crumpled in defeat. In the tower, Gray sank to her knees. It was over. With his silence, Banks Turner had sunk full national women's suffrage. She buried her face in her hands and wept with the Suffs below.

The last seven members all voted against the amendment, bringing the tally to a forty-eight in favor of the amendment to forty-seven opposed. The clerk called the last name.

"Speaker Walker"

Victorious, Seth Walker shouted out his vote.

"No!"

With that one word, the vote on approval of the Anthony Amendment ended in a tie. The amendment was defeated.

In the galleries, Josephine Pearson and the rest of the Antis jumped to their feet in victory.

But before they could erupt into cheers, Banks Turner stood, and those cheers died in their throats.

"Mr. Speaker," he said, "I wish to be recorded as voting Aye."

With Turner's vote, the tally was forty-nine to forty-eight in favor of ratification.

The Suffs' weeping turned into breathless tears of sheer joy. All had been lost, but now victory was theirs. Delirious, they waved yellow flags and danced in the aisles, breaking out into song, singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" as they showered the legislators with yellow flowers, and pro-ratification delegates threw the yellow roses from their lapels up in the air. Seven decades after the Seneca Falls Convention, four decades after the bill that would become the Anthony Amendment was first introduced to the United States Congress, after votes in both chambers of forty-three state legislatures, full suffrage for all American women had been won by just one vote.

The Antis stood mute in stunned disbelief. They'd tasted victory twice, and twice it had been ripped away from them by just one vote. Anger seethed inside them.

On the floor, Seth Walker shouted over the celebrating Suffs, changing his vote from Nay to Aye. "And," he shouted, barely heard over the chaos, "I wish to move for reconsideration!"

The Antis' fury boiled over, and the target of that fury was Harry Burn. Threats were made from the galleries, and a mob threatened to form on the floor. Tempers raging, real fear of violence breaking out on the House floor forced Governor Roberts to order the sergeant at arms to guard the young legislator. Not waiting, Burn ran. He fled the chamber, slipping into the clerk's room and out the window. Gray and Carlisle gaped at each other as he crawled along a narrow ledge toward the tower where they were hidden, before he slipped back into the building through a window into the library, giving the librarian the surprise of his life.

As Burn made his escape down the library's ornate, spiral staircase chased by the shouting librarian, laughter slowly built up inside of Gray.

"That did really happen, didn't it?" she asked. "All of it?"

"It did."

"It passed. The amendment passed."

"It did."

The laughter bubbled up, and Carlisle joined in.

"And that man really crawled out a window and along a ledge."

"He did."

"It passed."

Gray ran to Carlisle and threw her arms around his neck, and he spun her around.

As he set her back on the ground, Gray's laughter faded and she touched her mother's brooch.

"It passed."

XIX

The amendment had passed, but the battle was not over. The Antis had the last card that Seth Walker had cunningly played in the midst of the chaos after the vote. Scarcely noticed by anyone at the time, he had switched his vote from Nay, to Aye. It was an expert move by someone who knew the rules of the game and how to use them to his advantage. House rules gave any member on the winning side of a vote two days to call for a reconsideration, and with his very next breath, he'd done just that. The move meant that Walker had the ability to call for a reconsideration vote on a moment's notice at any time over the following three days. If the majority of delegates in attendance voted in favor of the reconsideration motion, the original vote would be erased and a second held.

"But that's idiotic!" Gray wailed. "Why in heaven's name would anyone on the winning side of a vote wish to see it reconsidered? It doesn't make any sense!"

If the Suffs lost one single delegate, the amendment would be rejected.

They Suffs celebrated their victory, but they kept up their guard. For the next three days, the exact whereabouts of every last one of the forty-nine men who'd voted for ratification must be kept tabs of, and everyone of them must be ready and available to rush to the Capitol at any given moment. If Seth Walker got wind of any single one of them so much as traveling outside of the city for the afternoon, all would be lost. To say nothing of the ends the Antis wouldn't go to in trying to sway men to their side.

Gray wringed her hands.

To the world outside of Nashville, the House vote was the end of the matter. Congratulations poured into both NAWSA and the Women's Party headquarters from the four corners. Unsurprisingly, both presidential candidates issued statements expressing their pleasure in the news. James Cox gave the somewhat eye-rolling statement that the "civilization of the world is saved," whereas Warren Harding showed strong signs of amnesia, saying, "All along I have wished for the completion of ratification and have said so."

Mrs. Catt issued a statement. It read in part:

"Our mothers began it. So it came on to us as, in a way, a sacred trust. And a great part of our rejoicing today in the hour of victory is compounded of our feeling of loyalty to the past and our satisfaction that we have stood faithful to its trust.

Sue White received congratulations from family and friends, from strangers, from average people, and from Tennessee's former governor, who encouraged her and the rest of the Women's Party to join his party, saying "I know live people when I see them and you are the kind we need."

At Women's Party headquarters in the nation's capitol, Alice Paul stood on a balcony, and at long last, in front of a crowd of her fellow suffragists and members of the press, she unfurled her ratification banner—three vertical stripes of purple, white, an gold, with two rows of eighteen yellow and purple stars sewn on the white. One star sewn on as each state voted for ratification.

All of the congratulations and all the rest of it were all well and good, but there was still real work to be done on the ground, or all that had been accomplished could be reversed.

The Antis were hard at work, scheming and plotting. Throughout the rest of the day and into the night, they hashed out their plans for attack. It all came down to just one vote. All they needed was to just peel away one man. They planned to barrage each of the legislators who'd voted in favor of the amendment with at least one hundred angry telegrams condemning them for their vote, and they planned anti-ratification rallies throughout the state and in Nashville to fire up their supporters. In the meantime, fake telegrams of dire emergencies at home continued to arrive.

But the worst was planned for Harry Burn personally. They invented an explanation for his unexpected flip at the last moment, and it was a simple one as old as time—claim he'd been bribed by Joe Hanover. It was a bold faced lie they'd fabricated themselves, but that was of no matter. A "witness" was selected and instructed on what to claim he'd seen—Burn, dragged bodily into a side room of the chamber in the final minutes before the vote where he was both roughed up and bribed. Later that day, a group of Antis confronted Burn with their witness' formal affidavits and told him to chose—skip out on the reconsideration vote or face publication in the _Banner. _Joe Hanover received the same warning about the fictional bribe—get out of the way or face publication.

The memory of the Antis' grand plan and its even grander end would bring a smile to Gray's face for decades to come, she was sure.

The next morning, it was the Antis who were exposed. The _Tennessean—_owned by Luke Lea, a firm supporter of suffrage and bitter enemy of Edward Stahlman of the _Banner—_ran the scoop of the year: their affidavits exposed as lies on the front page for the world to see. Perhaps through their own carelessness, or perhaps through Divine intervention, they'd unknowingly hired a suffragist as a stenographer, who'd turned copies of the phony affidavits over to the _Tennessean._ Now, there they were in print, in the _Tennessean'_s morning edition before the _Banner_ could run them in the afternoon, accompanied by vehement denials from both men.

Tired, anxious legislators and outraged, angry observers returned to the House chamber Thursday morning. Both sides gave ovations to their heroes as they took their seats, as much to outdo the other side as to buoy up their own. Every one of the delegates had returned. That alone was a relief to the Suffs gathered in the gallery, but they were still on tenterhooks as to whether the Antis had succeeded in coaxing away any of "the Sterling 49".

Gray did her best to scan their thoughts, but she felt the chances of that had rather diminished with the Antis' shameful exposure that morning. Any delegate changing his mind in the Antis' favor after that would surely open himself to suspicion.

After the session was opened, Harry Burn stood and asked for a point of personal privilege.

"I desire to resent in the name of honesty and justice the veiled intimidation and accusation regarding my vote on the Suffrage Amendment, and it is my sincere belief that those responsible for their existence know that there is not a scintilla of truth in them.

"I want to state that I changed my vote in favor of ratification, first because I believe in full suffrage as a right. I believe we have a moral and legal right to ratify, and I knew that a mother's advice is always safest for a boy to follow, and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.

"I appreciated the fact that an opportunity such as seldom comes to a mortal man to free seventeen million women from political slavery was mine, and I desired that my party in both state and nation might say that it was one of their own from the east mountains of Tennessee, the purest Anglo-Saxon section in the world, who made national woman suffrage possible at this date, not for personal glory but for the glory of his party."

Burn was further defended by his mentor, Senator Herschel Candler, champion of the Antis.

"There has never been a finer, cleaner man than Harry Burn. The present charges are too ridiculous for utterance."

Thursday's session ended with no call for a reconsideration vote. The Suffs breathed a sigh of relief. Their Sterling 49 had held firm so far.

Desperate after failing in their blackmail attempt, they turned their attention to Harry Burn's mother, Phoebe Burn. The letter he had received before the session began was from her, urging him to "help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification." If they couldn't coerce the son, they would work on the mother.

They failed there as well. Mrs. Burn wired Abby Milton.

"Woman was here today, claims to be the wife of the Governor of Louisiana, and tried by every means to get me to refute and say that the letter I sent to my son was false. The letter is authentic and was written by me. . . .

"I stand firmly behind suffrage and request my son to stick to suffrage until the end. This woman was very insulting to me, and I had a hard time to get her out of my home."

Although their blackmail scheme had blown up in their faces, the Antis went ahead with their rally in Nashville to "Save the South."

Seth Walker took the stage to a standing ovation as the band played "Dixie". He heaped praise on the legislators who'd voted to reject the Anthony Amendment, declaring they had "signed their names in the blood of the South to keep this a white man's country and a white man's government." He then brought the auditorium to their feet by announcing he'd succeeded in persuading the needed delegates to oppose ratification.

News quickly spread, and the Suffs panicked, as did Gray. She did her best to follow his line of thought, but he was focused on the moment and riling up his audience. He wasn't thinking to himself whether what he was saying was all lies or the truth.

"I don't believe it," Carlisle said. "Were that true, he'd have led with it."

The was something in that, and Gray took comfort in it. Moreover, she asked herself what the purpose of advertising it would be at all, were it true. Call for the vote in the morning and be done with it. The more she thought about it, the more she felt it had been a bluff. Heaven knew Seth Walker was not a man whose word could be trusted.

Friday morning brought more devastating news to the Suffs. The baby of a staunch supporter of suffrage was dying. Tragically, this was not just one more phony telegram. As with Charlie Brooks' wife, the news was true. The heartsick father was already on his way to Union Station.

Once again a former Senator Newell Sanders offered to charter a special train to speed the young lawmaker, Tom Dodson, home if he would stay to vote against reconsideration. A band of Suffs raced to the station, arriving with only moments to spare, just as his train was about to leave. Two men jumped on board and begged Dodson to stay, promising the specially chartered train would speed him home immediately after the reconsideration vote. Torn, Dodson hesitated. At the very last moment, the train already in motion, he agreed. The three men jumped off the moving train and returned to the Capitol building.

As he opened the session, everyone in the chamber noted how pale Seth Walker looked. The moment now come, Gray heard quite clearly what she hadn't the night before. He didn't have the votes he'd claimed to have, and again, there was no reconsideration vote called. Suffrage supporting delegates moved to adjourn until Saturday, and the motion passed. Walker's plan to call for a reconsideration vote had fallen flat. He'd failed to move a single suffrage vote, and time would run out before the House reconvened the following day. Finally, it seemed the Suffs could relax, their victory safe at last.

Their plans all come to naught, the Antis were desperate. In a last ditch effort to prevent what now seemed inevitable, a large group of anti-ratification lawmakers fled the state for Alabama in the middle of the night. The time limit on Seth Walker's reconsideration would expire, but the motion itself hadn't been formally defeated or tabled. The consensus among legal scholars was that it needn't be, but the Suffs were taking no chances. They wanted it officially and permanently tabled, but if the Antis could prevent a quorum, they could prevent its being voted on. It was grasping at straws, but it was all they had left. When the House convened Saturday, Charlie Brooks rejoined his colleagues. They were joined on the House floor by only nine anti-ratification House members, including Seth Walker. They were seven members short of a quorum.

A third of the seats on the House floor sat empty, but not for long. Filled with emotion at the what she saw in the minds of all in the chamber, Gray pressed her hand to her chest. The Tennessee Suffs filled the empty spaces. A full third of the seats on the House floor, filled by women.

Imagine that. . . .

Regardless of the lack of a quorum, Tom Riddick called for a vote. Ratification of a constitutional amendment was a federal matter, not a state one; therefore, he argued, state law on what constituted a quorum didn't apply. Walker attempted to rule the motion out of order due to the lack of a quorum, but the full House—all fifty-eight members of it—overruled him. The vote on his reconsideration motion was held, and by a constitutional majority of fifty to nine, it was defeated. The motion to certify and transmit was made, and unable to stop it, the nine anti-ratification delegates present refused to vote, and the motion passed fifty to zero.

Defeated at every turn, Seth Walker flat out refused to sign the resolution, but he was thwarted there too. His signature wasn't needed. Ratification was a joint resolution and the signature of the Speaker of the Senate alone was sufficient. In spite of the Antis' best and worst efforts, the joint resolution was sent to Governor Roberts for his official certification.

Finally, it was done, and the Suffs rang the mini Liberty Bell they'd hung in the House chamber in celebration.

It was infuriating, but the Antis refused to accept defeat, and they turned to the courts in an attempt to delay what they had not been able to kill. They filed an injunction to prevent Governor Roberts from certifying ratification, and they went ahead with their planned rallies across the state. In McMinn County, Harry Burn's home district, they claimed to have a petition signed by seven hundred people, demanding he change his vote.

The Suffs met their efforts with expert legal teams of their own, and the Antis' injunction was dissolved. The Antis then turned to the federal courts in a desperate, last-ditch but futile effort to keep the U.S. Secretary of State from accepting Tennessee's ratification.

On Tuesday, August 24, 1920, surrounded by the press and many of the people who had worked to make it happen, Governor Roberts signed the certification of Tennessee's ratification. In contrast, two days later on August 26, alone in his office, the U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby quietly signed the proclamation into law, no witnesses, no cameras, no fan fair. Mrs. Catt and Alice Paul had both intended to be present, and Miss Paul had arranged for photographers and moving cameras to record the moment, but Secretary Colby had neither any interest in being caught between two groups of feuding women, still unable to bury the hatchet, even in victory, nor in allowing more time for the Antis to cause trouble.

The long fight won, the women of NAWSA and the Women's Party had begun to think of the future, to move on to the next fight, the next stages in their lives. NAWSA would become the League of Women Voters. The Women's Party would be meeting in the near future to decide their path forward.

Gray stood in front of the window, overlooking the Capitol building. Night was falling, and the white limestone building glowed golden in the late evening light. She felt an odd sense of loss she couldn't explain. She should be jubilant.

NAWSA, now the newly born League of Women Voters, was planning a nationwide celebration for noon on Saturday, August 28. Church bells, school bells, factory and train whistles, firehouse sirens, car horns, would all be sounded. In Philadelphia, bells were to be rung on Independence Square. In Chicago, the mayor had requested that at noon as the bells pealed, the men of the city doff their hats in honor of the newly equal women citizens.

Gray felt a crushing wave of grief. Trudy and Sibby, their fathers and brothers tipping their hats to their wives, sisters, and daughters. Thinking of her father, standing beside her mother, looking down on them and tipping his hat with all of the other men, Gray pulled her lips between her teeth and bit them hard.

Tennessee would not be participating. Excuses were made. There in Nashville, violence had broken out in a strike by the city's streetcar workers. The mayor didn't have time to issue a proclamation for the bells to be rung, he claimed. She didn't particularly care. Full suffrage for all American women was now the law of the land. They didn't have to like it.

The sun dipped below the horizon. Gray let the curtain fall shut and moved from the window. The out-of-town players had all gone home. She and Carlisle would be departing in a couple of days themselves. They had found men willing and able to provide them with papers to begin new lives in Wisconsin, for a price, and Carlisle had received some promising responses to inquires he'd made about available properties. Once the documents were delivered, there would be no reason for them to stay.

And she was ready to leave. She wanted to get to Wisconsin in time to register to vote in November.

Gray found herself thinking frequently of the anti-suffrage campaigners who had come to Nashville, whose minds she had begun to grow accustomed to over the past month. Many of them were from the deep south—Texas, Louisiana, Alabama. In her mind, she saw black clad figures systematically executing a screaming, writhing crowd.

_Something is troubling you, _Carlisle said to her. _Are you having second thoughts about Wisconsin? _

"Not at all. I'm ready to get on with it. I'm looking forward to it."

Carlisle was too. "I have a good feeling about it."

Gray smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes, and her gaze drifted back to the window.

_What is it then?_

"I keep thinking about the southern wars." All of those humans, heading back into the middle of a century-long vampire war, completely unaware. . . .

A strand of her hair had come loose, and Carlisle brushed it back.

Gray shook herself.

"I'm being silly."

"Silly is the last thing you're being."

She saw from Carlisle's memories of the pandemic two years ago just how hard it was to be surrounded by so much suffering and death. She saw her parents, and she saw herself. Her mother had succumbed in under twenty-four hours, but her father had lingered for days. She herself had been in between, healthy one morning to hopeless by the following evening.

Then she saw the young woman with the broken leg.

Carlisle turned away, and Gray rubbed her bare hands together. Thinking about the pandemic, he worried about her.

"I need gloves," she said in an attempt to change the subject. "I ruined all of mine, and—"

_Her name is Esme._

Gray fell silent. Carlisle had never spoken a word about the woman before, and she hadn't wanted to intrude.

"She's very beautiful."

Carlisle smiled. "She was. Is. She lives in Ohio. In Columbus. She'll be about twenty-five now."

"How did she break her leg?"

"Fell from a tree."

"Fell from a tree?" Gray asked, surprised. A girl of about sixteen, climbing a tree. She had to be a rare sort.

"She was a remarkable young woman."

Gray didn't doubt it.

_I left Columbus within the week. I couldn't—_

"A year later, I met this headstrong eleven-year-old with a broken arm."

"I remember."

"You were indignant."

She saw herself in his memories. She'd been riding Copper, and some fool of a groom had made her ride sidesaddle. Something had spooked the mare, and she'd been thrown off. Papa had been livid, and Gray saw why in Carlisle's memory of speaking to him afterward. She wouldn't want to have been in that groom's shoes when Papa had gotten hold of him.

_You reminded me so much of her. So much more alive than the others. So curious. When you got sick, I couldn't . . . God forgive me if I was wrong to—_

"You weren't wrong."

She'd told him that before, but a lingering doubt remained. Had he acted solely to save her, or had it been as much for himself, to no longer be alone?

Nashville in August was stifling hot, but winter in northern Wisconsin would be frigid.

"We'll need to do some shopping, if we're going to settle in Wisconsin," she said.

Carlisle grinned and nodded.

"We can't have you seen in public with no gloves."

"Good heavens, no." She laughed. "Scandalous."

"It smells like rain coming. We should be able to go out tomorrow."

"Will we be able to find Wisconsin winter appropriate wardrobes in Nashville, do you think?"

"We can stop in Minneapolis for a week or two for that sort of thing, and, of course, there'll be furniture to order. Appearances must be kept up."

They would have to pass Illinois en route. She would be so near, but yet so far. It might as well be on the other side of the globe.

"And once we have an address to have it delivered to, we can get your piano back."

She touched her mother's brooch and agreed. That would be nice. She'd need sheet music and such. She smoothed her hair back. That one lock had always escaped its pins. So much had changed in so short a time. So many women were cutting their hair short. Had Sibby and Trudy? She could see them doing it. Would she herself have had the nerve? she wondered. She rather liked those smooth waves women were wearing their hair in. They looked so smart and modern.

Clouds rolled in during the night, thick and dark, and by the time the sun rose unseen behind them, a light mist was falling over Nashville. Perfect weather for a morning's shopping.

Nashville began to prepare for it's new day, and Gray prepared to begin her new life.

Miss Gray Anthony.

XIX

* * *

Author's notes:

The bill that would eventually become the 19th amendment was initially introduced the the United States Congress by Senator Aaron A. Sargent from California in January 1878. It would be introduced unsuccessfully every year for the next 40 years.

* * *

Before being passed in Tennessee, the Anthony Amendment had been voted on in forty-three states—thirty-five for and eight opposed. Five states had refused to vote, but one of them, Connecticut, reconsidered and ratified the amendment in September.

* * *

There is contradiction online as to whether Harry Burn actually ran for it and fled through a window—the House chamber is on the second floor—but Elaine Weiss' _The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight To Win The Vote _says he did, and since she's got over 35 pages of meticulous footnotes, I'm trusting her research. Most places online that say he did crawl out a window have him reentering the building through an attic window, but from what I can find of the Tennessee Capitol building, it doesn't look like there is an attic.

* * *

Carrie Catt's full statement after the House vote:

"Our mothers began it. So it came on to us as, in a way, a sacred trust. And a great part of our rejoicing today in the hour of victory is compounded of our feeling of loyalty to the past and our satisfaction that we have stood faithful to its trust.

"Now that it is all over, the feeling of "ceaselessness" is probably the sensation uppermost with us all, and perhaps that is just as well that it should be. For women cannot stop. The National cannot stop. With a new purpose, the purpose of making the vote register for an improved citizenship, the women of the National are already lined up under a new name, the League of Women Voters."

* * *

". . . they'd unknowingly hired a suffragist as a stenographer . . ." I mean, really! Honestly, if you're going to blackmail someone, know who you're working with. Seriously! How did they not check the person out? They had a newspaper and all its resources at their disposal, for crying out loud!

* * *

A point of personal privilege is a way in which a legislator can get the attention of the presiding officer on the floor of either chamber.

* * *

Harry Burn's speech is accurate according to Elaine Weiss' _The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight To Win The Vote, _with the exception of one small change I made to remove the name of the party.

* * *

From Mrs. Phoebe (Febb) Burn's letter to her son:

". . . Hurrah and vote for suffrage and don't keep them in doubt. I noticed Chandler's speech. It was very bitter. I've been to see how you stood but have not seen anything yet.

". . . Write mother every time you have a chance, for I am always looking for a letter when you are away. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. 'Thomas Catt' with her 'rats'. Is she the one who put rat in ratification? Ha. No more from Mama this time."

* * *

A constitutional majority is one more than the full membership of the voting body. It's a fixed number, as opposed to a traditional majority which fluctuates based on how many are present to vote. There were ninety-nine House members, so a constitutional majority is fifty, even though there were only fifty-nine present.

* * *

The Antis would keep up their legal fight against the amendment until 1922, when the Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision against them.

* * *

Between eight and ten million women voted in the 1920 presidential election, a little over 30% of those eligible, compared to the nearly 70% of eligible men who voted. It wasn't until the 1970s that women voted at the same rate as men and the 1980s that the percentage of women voters overtook men.

* * *

Carrie Chapman Catt remained an activist for the rest of her life. A pacifist, she worked for peace and disarmament causes and was monitored by the FBI. During the second world war, she lobbied the U.S government to ease immigration restrictions for refugees. She died of a heart attack in 1947.

Sue Shelton White earned a law degree 1923, the 75th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention, and helped draft the Lucretia Mott Equal Rights Amendment. In 1926 she returned to Jackson, Tennessee as the city's first female attorney and to work for her own law firm, Anderson and White. She drafted legislation in Tennessee, including the state's first married woman's property act, a mother's pension law, and an old-age pension act. In the 30s, she became active in the New Deal programs and served as assistant administrator for the Consumer's Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration and as the chief attorney for the Social Security Board. She died in 1943 from cancer. Year after year, the proposed amendment was introduced, but it was not until 1972 that both houses of Congress passed the Equal Rights Amendment and sent it to the states for ratification. The amendment failed to be ratified by three-fourths of the states.

Alice Paul lead the National Women's Party until she died in 1977. During her lifetime, the Women's Party worked for women's rights, including passage of the Equal Rights Amendment.

Josephine Pearson returned to teaching, mostly at Christian colleges, and continued to write essays and opinion pieces on political and cultural topics. On election day 1920, she passed out Anti propaganda claiming the 19th Amendment was not legal. Poll workers admired her fight against women's suffrage. She did not vote, but men at the polls volunteered to vote for her. Every election until she died in 1944 she instructed a local man on how she wanted to vote, and he cast her ballot for her.

Governor Albert Roberts lost his re-election campaign and returned to his law practice in Nashville. He never held office again, but he did serve as a political elder statesman and advisor. He died in 1946.

Warren Harding defeated James Cox to become the 29th president. He died in office in 1923. Prior to his death, he was one of the most popular presidents, but after he died, scandals began to come out that eroded his popularity. Today, his administration is remembered for corruption, and he is ranked as one of the worst American presidents in history.

Seth Walker left the legislature and returned to his private law practice, including representing several railroads. He died in 1951.

Harry Burn won his re-election campaign that November. He returned to his law practice in McMinn County in 1923. In 1930 he ran for governor and lost. He ran for the Tennessee Senate in 1949 and won. He served on the state planning commission for twenty years. He was a bank president and lawyer for the Southern Railroad before he died in 1977.


End file.
